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RIDERS OF MANY LANDS 



BY 



THEODORE AYRAULT DODGE 

BREVET LIEUTENANT-COLONEL U. S. ARMY 

AUTHOR OF 

THE CAMPAIGN OF CHANCELLORSVILLE " "A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF OUR CIVIL WAR : 

" PATROCLUS AND PENELOPE, A CHAT IN THE SADDLE " " GREAT CAPTAINS " 

"ALEXANDER" '' HANNIBAL" " CAESAR " ETC., ETC. 



ILLUSTRATED 

WITH NUMEROUS DRAWINGS BY FREDERIC REMINGTON 

AND 

FROM PHOTOGRAPHS OF ORIENTAL SUBJECTS 





NEW YORK 

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 

1894 



- / 

X .NO 



^ 



Copyright, 1893, by Harper & Brothers. 

All rights reserved, 



/Z~3/f?3 






PREFACE 



The following pages, which ought, perhaps, to be entitled " A 
Globe-trotter's Pot au Feu of Horse-flesh, with a Seasoning of 
Chestnuts," recall to the author's mind the story of the old Yan- 
kee who, in default of other books, read Webster's Unabridged 
through from beginning to end, and then remarked that it was 
mighty interesting reading, especially the pictures, but it didn't 
seem to have much plot. May the author ask for the gentle 
reader's patience if he finds the same lack of sequence between 
these covers ? 

And yet there is a motif running through them, which the good 
American horse-lover will not find it hard to follow. 

Brookline, Mass., 1893. 



ILLUSTEATIONS 



PAGE 

AMERICAN POLO-PLAYERS Frontispiece 

"a country bumpkin" 2 

panathenaic rider 3 

OLD GALLIC SADDr,E . 8 

AN OLD-TIME NORTHERN PLAINS INDIAN — THE COUP .15 

STATUE OF ALEXANDER BY LYSIPPCJS 19 

A WHITE TRAPPER 81 

AN INDIAN TRAPPER 37 

THE TRAYAUX PONY 47 

MODERN COMANCHE 5o 

AN APACHE INDIAN 57 

UNITED STATES CAYALRYMAN 67 

INDIAN SCOUT WITH LOST TROOP-HORSE 91 

CANADIAN MOUNTED POLICE 95 

COWBOY LIGHTING THE RANGE FIRE 103 

THE INDIAN METHOD OF BREAKING A PONY 113 

A MEXICAN VAQCERO 125 

GENTLEMAN RIDER ON THE PASEO DE LA REFORM A 133 

A SOUTHERN RIDER 145 

A HUNTING MAN 151 

GENTLEMAN RIDER IN CENTRAL PARK 161 

COUNTRY GENTLEMAN'S TYPICAL SADDLE-HORSE 167 

JOCKEYS . • 173 

THE SPANISH WALK 181 

CAPRIOLE 183 

CROUPADE 185 

HOW TO DO IT 202 

HOW NOT TO DO IT 209 

FRENCH ALGERIAN CAVALRYMAN ON BARB 221 

CAVALRY LEAPING-DRILL IN ALGERIA 225 

A SPAHI AND HIS BARB, ALGERIA 231 



viii ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

REMOUNT BARB FOR ALGERIAN CAVALRY 235 

SPAHI RACKING ALONG THE ROAD 239 

SPAHI, EQUIPPED FOR "FANTASIYA," MAKING HIS HORSE REAR 242 

COUNTRYMAN ON AN ASS 251 

BICHARI CAMEL-RIDERS, UPPER EGYPT 265 

READY FOR THE "FANTASIYA " . .- . 267 

"FANTASIYA" RIDERS, ALGERIA . 271 

TUNISIAN HAT 274 

MY FRIEND THE CALIPH 281 

TUNISIAN WITH TWO-YEAR-OLD BARB 287 

A TUNISIAN SHEIK 290 

ARABIAN POLO-PONIES, CAIRO 293 

ENGLISH OFFICER ON ARABIAN, CAIRO 295 

SAIS HOLDING ARABIAN, CAIRO 299 

EGYPTIAN WOMAN'S STYLE 315 

TIRED DONKEY-BOY 321 

WELL-BRED SADDLE-ASS, CAIRO 329 

CAMEL-RIDERS ON THE DESERT 335 

AN ARABIAN SIRE 341 

BEDOUIN ESCORT FROM JERUSALEM TO JERICHO 349 

RICH BEDOUIN SHEIK 363 

SYRIAN WOMAN ON AN ASS 367 

POOR BEDOUINS OF MOAB 371 

PALANQUIN CAMEL 375 

TWO-CAMEL PALANQUIN 379 

A HUNGARIAN THOROUGH-BRED 387 

ONE OF THE SULTAN 'S RIDING-HORSES 391 

AN OLD ARABIAN FROM THE SULTAN'S STABLE 397 

OLD ARAB OF THE SULTAN'S STABLE ON ARABIAN . . 400 

MODERN GREEK COSTUME 405 

COSSACK OP THE GUARD — FIELD TRIM 413 

KING OF NEPAUL 429 

MANIPURI POLO-PONY . . 437 

CHINESE MANDARIN 453 

MONGOLIAN HORSEMAN 473 

HAWAIIAN BULLOCK-RIDERS 479 

HAWAIIAN AMAZON RIDER 483 



We Americans are a many-sided people, and our eques- 
trianism partakes of our many-sidedness. The greatest 
variety of riders which any one people has produced has 
thriven on the continent of North America. Going back 
to include the days, still in the memory of old men living, 
when the Indians who dwelt farthest from civilization 
were armed with bow and arrow, tomahawk and lance, 
and rode without a saddle, we can count within the boun- 
daries of the Union almost every type of rider, from those 
who subdued the steed in the era which produced the frieze 
of the Parthenon to the Sunday rider of the present year 
of grace. As a matter of pure skill, as well as artistically 
speaking, the first-named, or bareback rider, stands in every 
age at the head of all equestrians, while the latter is a 
proper object-lesson of what to avoid ; but, inasmuch as 
for practical work the saddle gives a distinct superiority 
in many ways, we can scarcely compare the bareback 
horseman with the modern rider, be he good, bad, or in- 
different. 

"When we speak of bareback riding, we do not refer to 
the country bumpkin, a species indigenous to every soil, 
and most aptly illustrated in Rosa Bonheur's " Horse Fair." 
Especially where horses trot is this bareback horror at his 
worst. Leaning back, holding for dear life to the reins 
which give him a good half of his security, with elbows 
in air, or marking time to the horse's steps, and with a 
general appearance of a set purpose to contend with the 




A COUNTRY BUMPKIN 



impossible to the end of the chapter, this rider is the very 
pattern of how not to do it. Take the rider on the big 
gray in the " Horse Fair," and compare him with one of the 
riders in the Panathenaic procession ! How can two men 
doing the same thing be so at odds ? And yet each would 
cast a slur at the other's horsemanship. 

Qui s> excuse S* accuse, and I do not wish to offer an apol- 
ogy for what, in the following pages, may often on the 
surface appear to be dogmatic. I hope that my brothers 
in horsemanship will absolve me from narrowness — in all 
things easily the first of vices. I have put a girdle round 
the earth ; I have ridden with all kinds and conditions of 
men, from Mexican vaquero to Arab sheik ; I have thrown 
my leg across every species of mount, from a bronco to a 



ARTISTIC RIDING 3 

bridle-bullock; I have discussed horse -lore in the great 
maneges of Europe and on the Syrian desert, and I equally 
love to ride my pet horse and my hobby. You may dis- 
agree with me, my brother rider, but let us argue together. 
I will say my say now, and then you shall have your turn. 
I shall expect to learn much from you. 

~Ko intelligent horseman ever claims for his own method 
the a and ay of equitation. It is an axiom among all 
men who are not hide-bound by prejudice that the method 
of riding, and the bit and saddle which are best adapted 
to the animal to be ridden, to the needs of the work to be 
done, and to the climate, will, barring poverty of resources, 
be the ones to grow into use among all peoples and every 
class. This fact is well illustrated by the two almost 




PANATHENAIC RIDER 



4 DIFFERENT STYLES 

extreme seats of the cowboy and the fox -hunter. The 
cowboy has to be astride his ponies from a dozen hours 
upwards every day, ropes steers, or drags out mired cows ; 
has to stick to his saddle under the most abnormal con- 
ditions, and must if need be have both his hands at liberty. 
He rides with a short tree, horn pommel, and high cantle. 
He laughs at any other rig. The fox-hunter has nothing 
to do but to keep his seat ; he has no occupation for his 
hands except by the play of the bits to get the very best 
performance out of his horse — a delicate enough operation 
by-the-bye, and not to be quickly acquired — and needs a 
saddle on which he can not only sit safely and comforta- 
bly over difficult obstacles, but which is convenient to fall 
out of if a horse comes down, and will prove the least dan- 
gerous should his horse come atop of him. He rides the 
flattest thing known except a pad. The very best author- 
ity obtainable — those men, to wit, who have done duty as 
cowboys, and have ridden to hounds as well (and many 
of us know from personal friendship that a man may be 
equally distinguished on the ranch, with the Meadow 
Brooks, and in politics and letters, too) — unite in pronounc- 
ing each saddle to be as closely adapted to the needs of 
each rider as it can be made. Long use will extract what 
is good from every style. Even the Arab, who would 
laugh to scorn the long stirrups of the cowboy, or the per- 
sistent road-trot of the fox-hunter, rides in a fashion which 
to us seems at first blush inexplicable, but which, when 
one has long dwelt among them, is found to be by no 
means ill-adapted to his needs. His entire rig suits the 
Arabian he rides vastly better than a flat English saddle 
would do, which latter, indeed, he deems the product of 
the always more or less insane Frank. 

Leaving out the soldier, who is the lineal descendant of 
the knight in armor, with seat and saddle modified by his 



THE BEST RIDER? 5 

more modern weapons and equipment, and who is every- 
where — barring some national traits — substantially the 
same, the home of the short seat and long stirrup is the 
Occident, that of the long seat and short stirrup the 
Orient ; and these are varied in every locality to suit its 
own peculiarities, inherited or acquired. There are a few 
exceptions to this rule, but they only serve to prove it. 
Midway comes the Englishman, with his numerous civil- 
ized imitators, whose seat is a compromise between the 
long and the short. All other styles approach more or 
less to these, and each has, among the prejudiced, its un- 
compromising advocates. But whatever seat may be be- 
lieved by its partisans to be the best, there are, after all 
said, so many unsurpassed riders who break every com- 
mandment in the civilized decalogue of equitation that 
we cannot even ask " Who is the best rider ?" but only 
" What is the best form for the peculiar wants of each of 
us, or of our climate, roads, and horses ?" 



II 



Xenophon, whose work on horsemanship is the earliest 
which has been preserved to us, gives to some of our eques- 
trians a commendable example by praising Simo, who had 
preceded him, and perhaps cut him out, in writing a horse- 
book. " We shall expect," says he, " to acquire additional 
credit, since he who was skilled in horses has the same 
notions with us." It is everywhere a good deal the fash- 
ion, and in some places a matter of faith, to claim that 
some particular brand of horsemen, as of cigars or whis- 
key, is the best; or, rather, that there can be no other 
really perfect brand. But this is a provincial trick. "Whoso, 
like Odysseus, has seen men and cities, knows that there 
are everywhere equally good liquor, tobacco, and riders. 

By-the-way, the author as well as the genius of the 
Anabasis was one of the most thorough of horsemen. Let 
me commend his "Horse Book" to your reading. You 
will find in fifty pages more horse sense than, I fear, there 
may be found between even these covers. And it serves 
to prove that man and horse have not much varied through 
the many centuries since this Yankee of a Greek marched 
through trials to the sea. 

Apart from geological evidences, in which we riders of 
to-day are not as deeply interested as we might be, the 
Orient was the original home of horsemen, and war was 
the early training-school of the horse. Though this most 
useful of quadrupeds appears first in history and monu- 
mental record as a beast of burden, and though riding 



THE HORSE IN WAR 7 

must be assumed to have preceded driving, there is evi- 
dence to show that chariots in great numbers were em- 
ployed in Avar before cavalry came into common use. In 
the first home of the horse, his utility was all but limited 
to war ; camels were the freight-carriers on a large, asses 
on a small, scale ; bullocks were as much a usual means 
of passenger transportation as camels ; and they were no 
doubt then, as now in parts of the Orient, steady and 
rapid travellers. No one who has not seen the trotting 
bullock has any idea of how fine a driver he is ; as well 
bred as a racer, as quiet as the traditional (not the actual) 
lamb, he will go his forty miles in seven or eight hours 
to your entire satisfaction. But the bullock was of no 
use in war. He was lacking in character as much as his 
brother the bull was ungovernable. The utility of the 
horse as an adjunct to armed man soon impressed itself 
on his owner. The higher the warrior could tower above 
the common herd of soldiery, the more terrible his aspect, 
and the deadlier his aim with lance and arrow. To fight 
from above downward was always the desideratum in 
the days of short -carry jactile weapons; and from this 
ambition came the steed's early appearance in battle. But 
to debase him to the purposes of pleasure was, for many 
generations after he became an e very-day matter, never 
dreamed of. He was altogether too noble an animal ; and 
we can well imagine that he impressed himself upon the 
ancients with; the same force he exerts on us. 

We find the very best of cavalry in ancient times. The 
Greeks ran against a very serious problem in the Persian 
light horse when they first trod the soil of Asia Minor. 
While the best infantry in existence, they in nowise com- 
pared as horsemen with the Asiatics until Alexander's 
Companion Cavalry showed them what good material and 
intelligent drill would do. But Alexander's methods were 



8 SADDLES 

forgotten, and the Greek and Koman cavalry for centu- 
ries after his day remained less apt than that of their 
barbarian neighbors. It was Philip of Macedon who had 
first utilized the excellent little chunk of the Thessalian 
plains, and organized the Companion Cavalry, which his 
splendid son so divinely led, and which, to judge from its 
manoeuvres and fighting, must have consisted of the most 
admirable horsemen. The ancients all rode without sad- 
dle or stirrups, on a blanket, or on a pad, or bareback, 
and in spite of this fact, or perhaps by reason of it, 
rode extremely well. 

The origin and era of the first saddles is hard to trace. 
Some authorities strive to prove the existence of a saddle- 





tree several centuries before the Christian era. The an- 
cient Gauls unquestionably used a tree. This is shown 
by some small terra-cotta figures found in France, dating 
back to the early centuries of our era. But we know that 
the Greeks did not habitually use a saddle. 

It is wonderful what feats of military horsemanship the 
bareback rider could perform in the age of what we might 
call gymnastic equestrianism. Nothing but the personal 
knowledge of what our old-time Indian could do enables 
us to credit the historical accounts of the Greek's agility 
and skill. They were simply wonderful. The weapons 
he carried, his heavy armor, his baggage, all appear to 



THE KNIGHT IN ARMOR 9 

handicap him beyond possibility of marching or fighting 
bareback ; and yet we know that Alexander covered an 
extraordinary distance in his pursuit of Darius ; and Ar- 
rian tells us enough to determine beyond a peradventure 
that no cavalry has ever been fought ate fond as were the 
Companions under the son of Philip at the Hydaspes. 
But this was owing primarity to the Achillean fury of 
Alexander. 

When, after the lapse of centuries, saddles came into 
common use, there grew up two schools of riding — that 
of the mailed warrior, whose iron armor well chimed in 
with his "tongs on a wall" seat in his peaked saddle, and 
that of the Oriental, whose nose and knees all but touched. 
The former was not what we really call a horseman ; he 
was a mere man on horseback. That some of them were 
noble-looking specimens is vouched for by, say, the statue 
of Bartolomeo Colleoni, in Venice, easily best of eques- 
trian figures, and surely a splendid ideal in many ways. 
But the horse was more of a lumbering vehicle than a 
saddle-beast, a species of conveyance — a gun-carriage, so 
to speak — for the bulky man of iron, who could no more 
walk than ride, and when unhorsed was as useless as a 
dismounted gun. Why the Eastern rider, who is at the 
other end of the category, and really a horseman, should 
cling to his extremely short leathers it is hard to say, un- 
less it be from the same ancient motive — to place him 
the higher above his horse, and therefore make him the 
more imposing when he stands up in his stirrups to bran- 
dish scimitar or matchlock. Yet he is a wonderful rider, 
this same Oriental; as we shall see when we reach his 
habitat ; and so indeed is every man, whatever his style, 
who from youth up is the companion of the horse. This 
peculiar type — to come back to our original statement — 
does not exist in North America, though some of our Ind- 



10 AMERICAN VARIETY 

ians ride with very short stirrups, and in a manner in 
some points not unlike the Arab of to-day. But every 
other style of equitation is found either among our abo- 
rigines, or in the thickly populated sections of our con- 
tinent. 



Ill 

The bareback rider was common among the plains 
Indians of forty years ago. Beyond trappings for mere 
show, the noble red man's pony was as naked as he. The 
bareback seat ought in theory to be alike in all ages, va- 
ried slightly only by the conformation of man and beast — 
the slimmer the horse's barrel, or the longer the man's 
legs, the straighter the seat. We are wont to ascribe vari- 
ations from it to the use of saddles. This seat, in addi- 
tion to giving the balancing trick, is supposed to train a 
man to grip his horse from breech to knee, and, unless 
when making unusual exertions which require all the grip 
a man has at command, to allow his leg from the knee 
down to hang more or less perpendicularly. It is at all 
events distinctly the model from which to start. The less 
the variation from it the better the results. And although 
many horsemen who wander furthest from this seat achieve 
singular success in equitation, the model, nevertheless, re- 
mains the best. This is a maxim in every school in Eu- 
rope or America. Variations from the bareback seat are 
the result of peculiar habits or requirements. 

This is only theorizing, you may say. True, but the 
best practice comes from following out good theory, how- 
ever often practice alone may produce individual success. 
A man or a horse, or both combined, may accomplish as- 
tounding results in the wrong way ; but the same skill, 
patience, and labor, properly directed, would have accom- 
plished more. " Practice makes perfect," runs the old 



12 BAREBACK RIDING 

saw, but the word " perfect " has a limited meaning. To be 
perfect in doing a thing incorrectly is a misapplication 
of endeavor, the more so if the thing done is per se useful. 

The average bareback rider of civilization is far from 
perfect. He pulls on his horse's mouth for dear life. If 
he quits his hold of the bridle or halter rope he is gone. He 
is, if any man, the typical three-legged rider — the very 
exemplar of what is vicious in the art. Good bareback 
riding, on the other hand, is one of the finest of perform- 
ances. Did you ever try it ? It is all very well so long 
as you have a bridle and a good tough mouth to hold on 
by ; but drop your bridle, fold your arms, and see what 
happens. If your horse knows you and you him, or if 
you have been there before, well and good ; but with a 
green beast, even if kind, you will find }^ourself all at sea ; 
and should you happen to have caught a Tartar, you will 
be sent to Coventry in short measure, to be a trifle mixed 
in metaphor. 

JSow the old-time Indian did just what you find so diffi- 
cult. He needed both hands for other things than hold- 
ing on. When hunting, he must use his bow and arrow ; 
on the war-path still less could he spare a hand to his 
horse. He was a consummate rider, who, despite what 
we call defects in style, could outdo in his way any rider 
who exists to-day. There are, of course, many things 
which only a man in a saddle can undertake ; but that 
by no means makes him the better rider. We must yield 
the palm to the bareback seat. 

What we have said of our old-time Indian applies with 
equal force to the cavalryman of antiquity. Livy aptly 
divides cavalry into "those with and those without the 
bridle," meaning regular and irregular horse. The former 
were the heavy horsemen. The latter guided their horses 
with voice or legs, or with a slender rod. " The Numid- 



EQUINE INTELLIGENCE 13 

ians, a nation ignorant of the rein, whose horses the wand, 
sportively waved over their ear, directs with not less ef- 
fect than the bit," sings Silius Italicus, in a key which 
yields us a pretty bit of information. To those who 
have never ridden in the ranks it would seem as if horses 
could not be managed without bit and rein ; but, in truth, 
if left to themselves and well trained, cavalry horses de- 
velop an intelligence unmatched in any other pursuit, and 
an ability to act> together in the right direction which is 
marvellous. How many victories are due to this equine 
instinct only the beau sabreur can know. 



IY 

We have from all sources accurate and consistent ac- 
counts of the extraordinary riding of the old savage. 
Catlin and Parkman and Dodge depict him fully. A 
piece of buffalo-robe girthed with a rope over the pony's 
back stood in lieu of saddle, if even so much was used ; a 
cord of twisted hair lashed round its lower jaw served 
both for bit and bridle. When hunting, in fact as a rule, 
the Indian wore naught but a breech-cloth and moccasins 
— not to lay stress on paint and feathers — and carried a 
buffalo-skin, which he threw around his shoulders or let 
fall from about his waist. He was often a splendid speci- 
men of manly strength and activity — this old-time Indian. 

"By G- , a Mohawk !" exclaimed Benjamin West, when 

he first beheld the Apollo Belvedere. A heavy whip with 
elk-horn handle and knotted bull's -hide lash hung by a 
loop to the Indian's wrist. His bow and arrows gave full 
occupation to his hands ; he was forced to guide his pony 
with legs and word alone, and to rely on its intelligence 
and the training he had given it to do the right thing at 
the right moment. Thus slenderly equipped, this superb 
rider dashed into the midst of a herd of buffaloes — a seeth- 
ing, tearing, volcanic mass of motion, of which no one 
who has not seen it can conceive an idea ; but so quick 
was the pony and so strong the seat of his master, that, 
despite the stampede of the terror-stricken herd and the 
charges of the enraged and wounded bulls, few accidents 
ever occurred. The Indian on horseback has ninety lives, 



INDIAN TRAINING 17 

not nine. His riding is not an art, it is nature. The cow- 
boy has a task to tax the stoutest when he rides into a 
stampeded herd of cattle ; but the cowboy has saddle and 
bridle-arm, the Indian had neither. 

The Indian has never developed a system of training 
his ponies. Each man taught his own to suit himself, and 
except under imitation of some chief who had exceptional 
success in training his ponies, or a certain trick perhaps 
shown by father to son and thus perpetuated, there was 
none but individual knack in his horsemanship. The 
plains pony was quickly taught after a rough-and-ready 
fashion, more by cruelty than kindness ; in a manner, in 
fact, as different from the system of the Arab as the fine 
shape of the horse of the desert as we see him in pictures 
differs from the rugged outline of the bronco as we see 
him in reality. All horses are more intelligent than man 
supposes; those most with men, or on which man most 
depends, most readily respond to training; and the Ind- 
ian and his pony were every day and all day comrades. 
Before the Indian could trade for or steal a bit, he always 
used the jaw-rope — or nothing. With the rope in the left 
hand, he bore against the neck to turn to one side, and 
gave a pull to turn to the other; or else he shifted his 
pony's croup by a more or less vigorous kick with either 
heel. When both his hands were busy, he relied entirely 
upon his legs and the pony's knowledge of the business 
in hand ; but as every Indian digs his heels into the horse's 
flanks and lashes him with the quirt at every stride, it is 
hard to see how the pony caught on to his meaning. The 
more credit to the quadruped. 

This method of the Indian is nothing new. You find 
the same thing among all tribes on whose territory the 
horse is indigenous. Historically we know that the Nu- 
midians, several centuries before the Christian era, had 

2 



18 INDIAN FEATS 

the same success with their steppes ponies ; that the Par- 
thians, long before the Greeks came in contact with them, 
were riders of equal merit. To-day all natives of those 
lands where the horse is bred are practically what our Ind- 
ian was, with whatever differences their respective na- 
tional traits may have developed. 

The riding feats of the Indian of to-day, such as shoot- 
ing, casting the lasso, or picking objects off the ground 
at a gallop, or hanging to one side of his horse, concealed 
all but an arm and leg, while he shoots at his enemy from 
behind the running rampart, were equally performed by 
his bareback ancestor. The latter was wont to braid his 
mustang's mane into a long loop through which he could 
thrust his arm to preserve his balance, but he had not the 
advantage of the cantle to hold to by his leg. The only 
representative of such cleverness to-day is to be found in 
the sawdust arena; not many decades ago, every third 
Indian could have given odds to the best of circus per- 
formers. The old bareback Indian rider has disappeared ; 
it needed but a short contact with civilization to show 
him the manifest advantages of bit and saddle. As the 
old men died off, the young bucks took to the tricks of 
the white man, quite as much from fashion as from an 
ability to put them to use. Whoso killed a pale-face would 
ride his saddle— galls or no galls to horse and man— as a 
matter of pure boasting; whoso could not get a rig by 
killing a pale-face was not happy until he stole one. And 
thus the fine old bareback trick was lost. 

It is to be regretted that we can make no satisfactory 
comparison between the bareback rider of ancient times 
and our own Indian of the past generation. There are 
many men yet living to testify to the skill and strength 
of the Indian horseman ; and Catlin has left us numerous 
pictures of the savage. But of the ancient rider we have 



ALEXANDER'S STATUE . 19 

ill monumental and ceramic art few except very crude 
pictorial delineations, and in books yet fewer written ones, 
and it would not be easy to reproduce him were it not for 
a few works of exceptional art which remain to us. One 
of the most precious relics of the past is a bronze statuette 
dug up at Herculaneum in 1751, and thought to be a copy 
of the equestrian statue known to have been made of 
Alexander the Great by Lysippus, after the battle of the 




STATUE OF ALEXANDER BY LYSIPPUS 

Granicus, when statues of all the brave who fell in this 
initial Greek victory were made by the famous sculptor. 
If it is truly a copy of Lysippus' work, we can judge from 
it how the Macedonians managed their horses in a hand- 
to-hand conflict. The King is shown sitting on a blanket 
firmly held in place by a breast-strap and girth ; without 
dropping the reins from his bridle hand he grasps this 



20 SEVERE SPURRING 

substitute for a saddle at the withers, and turning fully 
half-way to the right and looking backward, gives a swing- 
ing cut with his sword to the rear, covering as big an arc 
of the circle as the best swordsman who ever sat in a sad- 
dle-tree. The statue is full of life, and natural to a degree. 
If not Lysippus' work, it is that of a consummate artist. 
The position shows great freedom of movement on the 
horse, and a seat strong and elastic. That the Macedo- 
nians kept their heels well away from the horse's flanks, 
or rather that they did not rely on their heels to cling to 
him, is shown by their commonly wearing spurs, a thing 
the Indian is wont to avoid ; and the same habit shows 
clearly in this piece of art. 

And yet this does not prove much, perhaps. Our hunt- 
ing-men wear spurs, and are supposed to keep them for 
the proper moment ; still, whenever one chances to be 
photographed leaping an obstacle, even if only two feet 
high, you may see him with a good part of his glue resi- 
dent in his heels. " Cruelty to animals !" you exclaim. 
Yes, but in the excitement of the moment the horse, 
brave, generous beast, has scarcely noticed the pain. So 
closely does the horse partake of the rider's enthusiasm 
and purpose that the high -school horse, in the airs re- 
quiring great vigor, will calmly receive a severe applica- 
tion of the spur as an indication of the thing he is ex- 
pected to do, and this without the least resentment. 

When riding merely and not fighting, the Greek sat on 
his breech in a natural position, took a firm hold with his 
thighs, but let his legs from the knee down hang free. 
His attitude, as shown in the Panathenaic procession on 
the frieze of the Parthenon, was singularly graceful in 
style ; and that it Avas the common one is to be seen from 
Xenophon's rules for keeping the seat. He managed the 
reins with light and easy hands. The Indian, on the con- 



GOOD STYLE 21 

trary, to judge from the pictures we have of him, was as 
singularly awkward and ungainly. He sat on his crotch, 
leaned forward, with the thigh not far from perpendicu- 
lar and the leg thrust back at almost a right angle. This 
he could do with the plains pony, whose barrel was far 
from as well rounded as that of the Thessalian chunk; 
and he got a goodly part of his grip from his calf and 
heel. The contrast between the statue of Alexander, or 
one of the Parthenon riders, and any one of Catlin's pictures 
is striking , but we must remember that the former are 
the production of the ablest Greek sculptors, in the high- 
est bloom of art, under the personal direction of Phidias ; 
while the latter pretend only to convey the idea of the 
savage as he was ; and though the old-time Indian was 
the equal, probably the superior, as a mere rider, of the 
Greek, it is the latter whom we must select as a model if 
we wish to preserve any semblance of beauty in eques- 
trianism. And we may no more properly banish the idea 
of beauty from our habits of riding than from any other 
act of our daily life. As a rule, clever performance is as- 
sociated with what commends itself to the eye ; what we 
call style is often solely able performance ; but no one can 
watch the ungainly fad of swinging the legs or raising 
the elbows without a desire to send the rider to school — 
to the Elgin Marbles. 



It is no wonder that the Indian rode well. Before he 
could walk, or talk, or remember, the lad had been tum- 
bled into a parfleche with a lot of puppies or tepee stuif, 
and had travelled scores of miles a day ; he had later been 
tied to a horse, or been set astride his neck, and told to 
hold on by the mane, or fall off and be left behind ; and 
no Indian can recollect the time when he could not ride 
anything and everything which came along. The old 
knightly training — and why does it not, broadly construed, 
cover all that one wants to know ? — to ride and fence and 
speak the truth, was carried out for two-thirds its value 
by the Indian. They could ride, and they could use their 
weapons. The boys from twelve years up do most of the 
herding among all Indian nations, and in this occupation 
they become familiar with every pony in the tribe. It is 
probable that the lads have roped and mounted in suc- 
cession every one intrusted to their care, and have learned 
its individual qualities, while gaining in general horse- 
manship. 

Even to-day the Indian always races bareback. His 
saddle weighs far too much, and he himself does not train 
down like our jockeys, except when he is starved on the 
war-path, and racing is a pastime of peace ; so that at the 
starting-post lie strips off all he can from both his horse 
and his own person. He is keenly fond of speed-matches, 
and is up to every known and unknown trick of gambling 
or jockeying. He can give long odds to the best race- 



STRENGTH OF INDIANS 23 

track shark, and the sorrier he can make his pony look, 
if he knows he has speed, the better he is pleased. His 
pony will, of course, beat a thorough-bred at short dis- 
tances ; any pony can. He is half down the track before 
the racer has got his stride. At a mile or two miles the 
tables are turned, though there are many who insist that 
the bronco is the better at a ten or twenty mile gallop. 
This opinion is, I think, founded on an intimate knowl- 
edge of the bronco, but a lack of intimacy with the thor- 
ough-bred. In the late Berlin -Yienna ride the ponies 
came in with less apparent injury ; but they were not the 
winners — and many other factors came into play. 

The Indian does not rank high in beauty, strength, or 
endurance. There have been tribes in America which 
produced the finest of specimens ; but if we read Parkman 
carefully we shall find the Indian of two hundred years 
ago much what he is to-day, bar a few nasty white man's 
tricks, learned to the eternal disgrace of the latter. While 
wonderfully agile and with the fortitude which all wild 
tribes possess, the Indian lacks the strength of our ath- 
letes ; and in boxing or wrestling, even after a course of 
instruction, would be no match for an average American. 
A Sullivan — or rather a Corbett — could knock out two- 
score of them, " one down t'other come on." But for all 
that the Indian can perform equestrian feats which strike 
us as wonderful enough. It is a point of honor with him, 
as it was with the ancients and is still among many peo- 
ples, not to leave his dead or wounded in the hands of the 
enemy, liable to butchery or deprived of the rites of bur- 
ial ; and he will pick up a warrior from the ground with- 
out dismounting, almost without slacking speed, throw 
him across his pony and gallop off. This requires and 
receives much practice. Sometimes two act together in 
picking up the man, but one is quite able to accomplish it. 



24 THE "COUP" 

A buck represents the dead or wounded. He lies per- 
fectly still and limp if the former, or aids as far as is con- 
sistent with his supposed hurt if the latter. It is rather 
rough handling he has to undergo, but by no means as 
rough as one sees in some of our favorite sports — say, 
foot-ball. Perhaps this is the best of the numerous feats 
the Indian can exhibit ; but Dodge and Parkman tell us 
of many others. When I refer to Dodge, I mean Colonel 
Kichard Irving Dodge, of the Army — a soldier, a sports- 
man, and an author, partaking of the virtues of each pro- 
fession, and — well, I cannot say more an I would. Francis 
Parkman's unequalled knowledge of the Indian in our his- 
tory is acknowledged in every part of the civilized world. 
The Indians would be capable of making a superb irreg- 
ular cavalry were it not for the divided authority from 
which all tribes suffer. There is no central power, no 
influence to hold the individuals to anything like what 
we call duty. The recent efforts to enlist Indians have 
not proven successful. Capable of immense exertion un- 
der circumstances which arouse his fanaticism, he is yet 
at heart a lazy brute, and when he has once sated his pas- 
sion for adornment by wearing Uncle Sam's uniform for 
a few months, his greed for ease overcomes all sense of 
discipline, and he relapses into the indolent savage, of 
practically little use in any line but politics. Yet among 
themselves they have a certain organization, and in battle 
are able to execute a number of manoeuvres, all, however, 
weakened by the lack of the one controlling hand. Nor 
can the Indian be easily kept in the ranks. In order to 
claim a scalp, the warrior must give the dead man the 
coup. This was in olden times a stab with a weapon, but 
Indians now have what are called coup sticks. Whoever 
first strikes the victim the coup can rightfully claim the 
scalp, and no authority known to his savage instincts can 



"PENELOPE" 25 

keep an Indian in the ranks when there is a scalp at stake. 
The fact that an occasional Indian turns out trustworthy 
merely furnishes the exception which proves the rule. 

The Indians of to-day show a certain similarity in their 
style of riding to those of the last generation, so far as 
the constant use of the whip and heels is concerned, but 
the saddle has completely changed their seat, and the dif- 
ferent tribes differ as greatly among themselves as saddle- 
riding does from the bareback. All Indians ride well. 
Living in the saddle, breaking wild ponies, and using half- 
trained ones at all times, they cannot help being expert 
horsemen. They remind me of the old horse-lover who 
once examined a fine mare I was riding — it was "Penel- 
ope." "She's a good mare, Deacon Dyer," said I. "That 
'ere mare," replied he, after looking her all over with a 
true horseman's delight, and stopping in front of her to 
give one more look into her broad, handsome, courageous 
face — " that 'ere mare can't help but be a good un." So 
with the Indian ; but most of them ride in so ungainly a 
manner as to be hard to describe to one who has not seen 
them. 

The first point of difference between them and the civ- 
ilized rider which is apt to be brought home to a tender- 
foot turns on the fact that the Indian always mounts from 
the off side. This was a common habit also of remote 
antiquity, though Xenophon teaches you how to mount 
from the near side. Perhaps the habit came from the 
same cause — that the lance or other weapon was naturally 
held in the right hand, and could not readily be thrown 
over the animal without fright or injury. The Greeks 
had a small loop on the shank of the lance, into which 
they thrust their right foot in order to swing themselves 
up on their horse. The}^ had no weapons dangling from 
their waist to interfere with free action. But the long, 



26 MOUNTING ON OFF SIDE 

strap-nung sword of the mediaeval cavalry soldier com- 
pelled him to mount on the near side, and as he is the 
pattern from which we moderns have been cast the habit 
has survived. 

The average rider will be apt to deny that the soldier 
is the prototype of the modern horseman ; but every rid- 
ing-school maxim is a distinct inheritance from the caval- 
ryman of auld lang-syne ; and only he who has learned to 
ride, as it were, au naturel, can be free from these. Even 
then imitation of or association with those who have rid- 
den in a school will lend some of this color to his style. 

To revert to our text, the white man who attempts to 
mount an Indian pony in our fashion is very apt to get a 
nasty spill before he has reached his back, for at the unu- 
sual attempt the half-trained beast will be apt to fly the 
track with a quickness which the ordinary " American " 
horse could in nowise rival. He is not so easily managed 
either, this same pony. He is tractable and clever in his 
way, but his way is not our way ; and he must indeed be 
a fairly good rough-rider who, once mounted on a fresh 
and vigorous Indian pony, does not part company with 
him before he has covered many miles of sharpish riding 
or hunting. 



VI 

The old-time Sioux was one of the earliest of the sad- 
dle-riding Indians. He was to be met with on the North- 
ern plains some forty years ago. He managed his pony 
with a stick or the hereditary jaw-rope, and this when 
not in use he was wont to throw over the pony's neck, 
whence it would shortly fall and trail along the ground. 
But the pony never minded so small a thing. So well 
was he used to a rope thus trailing that he never blun- 
dered on it. This seems odd ; but if you will study the 
clever way in which a horse will avoid the stones in the 
road he is travelling over, by stepping slightly within or 
beyond them, or on this or that side of them, all the while 
apparently paying heed to other things, you will see how 
naturally he may avoid treading on a trailing rope. A 
horse is apt to get his leg caught in a bridle, because it 
has two reins buckled together, but scarcely in a halter- 
rope if he breaks loose from you. 

The home-made saddle of the old-time Sioux was con- 
structed of a wooden or sometimes an elkhorn framework. 
The side pieces were well apart, and were held to the 
arches by the most ancient practice of shrinking rawhide 
upon them. No one who has not used it has any idea of 
how firmly rawhide will hold two such pieces together. 
A broken wagon-tongue wrapped with rawhide is as good 
as new — better. The pommel and cantle of the Sioux's 
saddle were very much alike ; both rose perpendicularly 
from the arch of the tree to a height of sometimes eighteen 



28 THE SIOUX'S SEAT 

inches. There was no regulation pattern to them ; each 
saddle was separately made, and constructed and orna- 
mented according to the momentary taste and fancy of 
the maker, or according to the materials at hand. It was 
not a saddle of commerce. 

The bent-wood stirrups were lashed in straps also cut 
from rawhide, slung loosely on the side pieces, and work- 
ing back and forth into all conceivable positions. Such a 
trifle as ill -hung stirrups the Sioux never heeded. His 
seat was not so easily disturbed as a city swell's by one 
hole difference in his leathers. It was generally imma- 
terial to him whether he had any stirrups at all. His 
seat was peculiar. His leg from crotch to knee gripped 
in an almost perpendicular position ; from the knee down 
it was thrown sharply back, so that his weight was sus- 
tained solely on the crotch and the muscles of the thighs. 
As a consequence of this seat, he pounded in his saddle 
like a fresh recruit when riding anything but a rack or lope, 
leaned forward like a modern track- jockey at a hand-gal- 
lop, and stuck his heels into his pony's flanks for a hold. 
This matter of holding on by the heels is almost univer- 
sal among riders not civilized into the soldier's method 
above referred to. Nine-tenths of the daily riders of the 
world hold on by the calf and heel. How the Sioux could 
ride as he did and escape injury from the pommel is a 
mystery. But though smashing to atoms all the maxims 
of equitation, ancient or modern, the old-time Sioux was 
a good rider, and his seat was strong and effective. It 
has been referred to as ungainly ; but in a certain sense, 
no really strong seat can be such. Noteworthy ability is 
generally handsome per se. 

This savage tricked up his pony's mane and tail and 
forelock with feathers, beads, or scraps of gaudy cloth, 
and on occasion painted him all over with a colored clay, 



A SIOUX DUDE 29 

very much as the Hindoo will daub red spots of paint all 
over a white horse, or dye his tail pea -green. In his 
fashion the Sioux was as much of a dude as if he wore 
a three-inch collar and a big-headed cane, or shook hands 
with elbow in the air, and was a singularly picturesque 
horseman, if not one who would appeal to the eye of a 
park-rider. 



VII 



America has been full of picturesque characters. Even 
the Orient to-day, which is much what it has always been, 
has no more of the odd and interesting than we have had. 
Civilization (i. e. newspapers, railroads, and telegraphs) 
brings us down to one pattern. Keady-made clothing is 
the archenemy of the graceful and appropriate — the de- 
mon in art. No greater advance in mechanics was ever 
made than that of building arms, machines, and tools to 
scale, and that of duplicate parts. But people nowada} T s 
are all duplicate parts, and while it works well in mechan- 
ics, it destroys originality and beauty in the human race. 
When you consider what our early frontier population 
was ; what energy, intelligence, and pluck resided in the 
men who went out beyond "the settlements" into the 
habitat of the red man to hunt or trap, we can surely 
boast a more wonderful, and actually more picturesque 
set of actors on the stage of American history than can 
be found in any other land. 

Among these was the trapper. Some of the largest 
cities on the American continent — St. Louis, as an in- 
stance — may be said to have been built from the profits 
of the fur trade. There had been stray trappers and small 
dealers from the earliest days ; but the first man who dis- 
covered the immense extent to which the peltry traffic 
could be carried was a rover of broad views, who most 
likely hailed from Kentucky or Missouri, was of French 
or Scotch -Irish descent, and perchance came from the 



PICTURESQUE AMERICANS 33 

blood which crossed the Alleghanies in the footsteps of 
Daniel Boone, intent on adventure or flying from civili- 
zation. The white trapper was as averse to association 
with his fellow-man as the hardiest of the old pioneers ; 
in fact, he often fled the settlements for good and sufficient 
cause. He was not so much of a misanthrope as he was 
a law-breaker ; but it is said that many had fled from the 
irate importunities of their respective Xanthippes. It will 
not do to class this trapper among the Ishmaels; many 
were pushed out beyond the frontier by their love of ad- 
venture and expectation of gain, and were as blameless in 
their lives as they were courageous in their calling. But 
it is also a fact that many of these hardy fellows preferred 
to live in a country where there was no sheriff to molest 
nor deputy to make them afraid. The white trapper has 
now all but died out with the buffalo, though a genera- 
tion ago he was a common enough character in the terri- 
tories north of Colorado. His descendants have mostly 
turned cow-punchers. 

This famous hunter was a character more practical than 
poetic, though he has been made the subject of many fine 
phrases and the hero of many exaggerated situations. His 
unkempt hair and beard floated long and loose from under 
his coyote cap, and he had lived so continuously with the 
Indians that he had largely adopted their dress and their 
manners — could, if need be, live on the same chuck, and 
always had one or more squaws. He was apt to carry a 
trade-gun — perhaps a good one, perhaps an old Brown 
Bess cut down. At his side was slung an enormous pow- 
der-horn, for in the old days he could not so readily re- 
plenish his supply, far from civilization as he was wont 
to be. He rode a Mexican saddle, for which he had traded 
skins, or maybe stolen, and from which he had cut every 
strip of superfluous leather, as the Indian does to-clay. 



34 OUR REAL FRIENDS 

He rode the same pony as his Indian competitor in the 
trade, but with the seat adapted to a saddle rather than a 
pad, and still retaining a flavor of the settlements despite 
his divorce from their ways. In fact, a white man on the 
plains never quite acquires the redskin habit. He can to- 
day be told from an Indian as far as he can be seen by 
his style of riding, and it was no doubt always so. Nor 
had this trapper lost his pale-face instincts so entirely as 
to indulge in the Indian's usual atrocious cruelty to his 
horse. He can scarcely be said to have had the feelings 
of a member of the society with the exuberantly long 
name and truly benevolent method ; but he had the sense 
to see the commercial value of the care he might bestow 
on his rough-and-ready companion, and at least treated 
him with common consideration. This the good little 
fellow repaid with a love and unselfish devotion which 
only an animal can show. 

Eight here and now I would fain pour out my heart-felt 
admiration for the truest of our four-footed friends, our 
dogs and horses. Have you never had a horse, my brother, 
to whom you told your secrets and your griefs ? Have you 
never had a dog who was to you even as a child, for whom 
you wept bitter tears and honest when you had laid him 
at rest in some quiet spot, hallowed alone by his virtues 
and your sorrow ; who, for his short term of years had 
grown into your very inmost heart by his faithful love, 
his unswerving loyalty, his spotless truth of character? 
If not, turn this page, read no more. But if you have 
ever given your affection to such a loving creature, if you 
have ever held his head between your hands and looked 
long and deep down into his tender, earnest eyes, in which 
lurks no thought of treachery, no ideal but yourself, which 
view you with a pathetic trustfulness of which you know 
you are not worthy, then, my brother, join me in laying 



PICCOLA 35 

on his grave a wreath of everlasting, and thank God that 
you have known that truth and honor and pure faith 
which we weaklings of so-called civilization have lost in 
our efforts to grasp a higher good not half so well worth 
seeking. Truly the poor Indian was right in believing 
that he should share the company of his faithful friend 
when both should be translated to that equal sky ! If the 
hereafter is to be filled with the good we have known, 
will not many of us ask that such friends as these may be 
there ? I am humbly conscious that, if honest purpose and 
loyalty to her ideal be the test, there is certainly one dog 
I have owned who should enter the gates in advance of 
her master, strive he never so well for what is upright. I 
am not so sure that she had not a soul — that she is not 
waiting for me now, even as she used to do when I went 
away from home. Dear, loving, white - souled Piccola ! 
Many are the tears which the memory of thee hath evoked ! 
Though I live to the term when life is but labor and sor- 
row, thou shalt daily have thy meed of a tender thought. 
Was not Buddha, indeed, a true prophet ? But that is an- 
other story. 



Till 

The Indians were not long in finding out that peltries 
were a ready means of getting the guns and calico and 
fire-water of the white man, and the white trapper was 
not many years alone in the business. The Indian trap- 
per whom Remington's clever eye and hand have depicted 
may be a Cree or perhaps a Blackfoot, whom one was 
apt to run across in the Selkirk Mountains or elsewhere 
on the plains of the British Territory, or well up north in 
the Rockies, somewhat antedating the outbreak of the 
Civil War. He was tributary to the Hudson Bay Com- 
pany, whose badge he wore in his blanket coat of English 
manufacture, which he had got in trade. Wherever you 
met this coat, you might place its wearer. He had bear- 
skin leggings, with surface cleverly seared into ornament- 
al patterns, and for the rest the usual Indian outfit. He 
rode a pony which had nothing to distinguish it from the 
plains pony, except that in winter its coat grew to so re- 
markable a length as almost to conceal the identity of the 
animal. Unless you saw it in motion you might take it 
for a huge species of bear — with a tail. 

Such long coats are not uncommon among any breed 
of horses. We are wont to imagine that the Arabian 
always has a bright, glossy coat ; but during the chill 
rainy season of the regions north of the Arabian desert — 
and it can be as bleak and cold on those treeless wastes as 
heart can desire — the Arabian puts on a coat all but as 
long and rough as a sheep. Unlike the Indian's pony, he 




AN INDIAN TRAPPER 



PAD RIDING 39 

gets fed during the severe season, for his master is not 
quite so improvident as the red man ; and he does not get 
so gaunt and miserable as his transatlantic cousin. But, 
like the bronco, it takes but a week or so of grass to scour 
him out into a coat as sleek as that of a race-track favorite. 

The Indian trapper rode a pad which was not unlike 
an air-cushion, cinched in place and provided with a pair 
of very short stirrups hung exactly from the middle. This 
dragged his heels to the rear, in the fashion of the old- 
time Sioux, and gave him a very awkward look. By just 
what process, from a bareback seat, the fellow managed 
to drift into this one, which is quite peculiar to himself, 
it is hard to guess. Habits change by slow degrees, and 
each step is wont to bring a new condition somewhat re- 
sembling its predecessor. Here we have a seat which has 
wandered as far from the bareback as one can well imag- 
ine, and this in a comparatively short period. Among 
civilized peoples a novel invention may often immediately 
change a given method of doing a thing ; among savages 
changes are very gradual; among semi-civilized peoples 
change is so slow that one may almost say that it never 
occurs. 

Unlike the old-time Sioux, the Indian trapper would 
sit all over his horse, weaving from side to side, and shift- 
ing his pad at every movement. His pony's back was 
always sore. His pad-lining soon got hard with sweat 
and galled the skin, and the last thing which would ever 
occur to him would be to take steps to relieve his patient 
comrade's suffering. He never attempted to change his 
pad-lining or cinch the pad more carefully. On went the 
pad, up jumped the trapper ; and why shouldn't the pony 
buck, as he invariably did ? Sore backs are as much at 
the root of the bucking habit as the utterly insufficient 
breaking of the pony. 



40 SORE BACKS 

This matter of sore backs furnishes a curious study. In 
every southern country outside of the United States, and 
among all wild or semi-civilized nations which are not 
peculiarly horse lovers, no heed whatever is paid to saddle 
or pack galls. The condition of the donkeys in the East, 
in Africa, or in Spain and Italy, is as lamentable as it is 
short-sighted. It never enters the minds of the owners 
of these patient brutes that a sore back is a commercial 
loss ; nor do they couple the idea of cruelty with dumb 
creatures at all. It is not until you reach Teutonic na- 
tions that both these ideas are extended so as to reduce 
the discomfort of animals to a minimum. 

This is not so odd ; one does not have to be so very old 
to remember the time when, even among us, calves were 
tied by all four legs and slung head down on their way 
to market ; when common pity never extended to ani- 
mals. Even to-day, not very far from home, one may 
find many breaches of the should -be commandment: 
" Thou shalt treat thy dumb servant as thou woulclst thy 
son." In those countries where the doctrine of transmi- 
gration has obtained a hold on the people, animals are 
better off ; one does not like to abuse a creature which 
may contain the soul of one's great-grandmother. But 
bad as the cruelty of neglect may be, an American Indian 
is perhaps more actively cruel to his pony than any other 
person. He never wears spurs, not even as a matter of 
vanity, for spurs would prevent his pounding his pony 
with his heels at every stride, as is his wont ; but he will 
ride him till he drops dead in his tracks, when there is no 
necessity of his making speed ; he will lash him to the 
raw ; he will even stick his knife into him to make him 
gallop faster, and an Apache will give his pony a dig with 
his knife from sheer malice when he dismounts. 



IX 

There is no horse superior to the bronco for endurance ; 
few are his equals. His only competitor in the equine 
race is his lowly cousin, the ass, of whom I shall say much 
anon. The bronco came by his toughness and grit natu- 
rally enough ; he got them from the Spanish stock of 
Moorish descent, the individuals of which breed, aban- 
doned in American wilds in the sixteenth century by the 
early searchers for gold and for the Fountain of Youth, 
were his immediate ancestors ; and his hardy life has, by 
survival of the fittest, increased this endurance tenfold. 
He is not handsome. His middle-piece is distended by 
grass food ; it is so loosely joined to his quarters that one 
can scarcely understand where he gets his weight-carrying 
capacity, and his hip is very short. He has a hammer- 
head, partly clue to the pronounced ewe-neck which all 
plains or steppes horses seem to acquire by their nomad 
life. He has a bit too much daylight under him, which 
shows his good blood as well as the fact that he has had 
generations of sharp and prolonged running to do. His 
legs are naturally perfect, rather light in muscle and slen- 
der in bone, but the bone is dense, the muscle of strong 
quality, and the sinews firm. Still, in an Indian's hands 
his legs finally give way at the knees from sharp stopping 
with a gag-bit, and curbs will start on his houghs, for a 
redskin will turn on a ten-cent piece. 

The pony is naturally quick, but his master wants him 
to be quicker. His hunting and all his sports require work 



42 BRONCO ENDURANCE 

which outdoes polo. One form of racing is to place two 
long parallel strips of buffalo-hide on the ground at an 
interval of but a few feet, and, starting from a distance, 
to ride up to these strips, cross the first, turn between the 
two, and gallop back to the starting-point. A fraction 
of a second lost on a turn loses the race. Until one thinks 
of what it means, a twentieth part of a second is no great 
loss. But take two horses of equal speed in a hurdle race 
with twenty obstacles. One pauses at each hurdle just 
one-twentieth of a second ; the other flies his hurdles with- 
out a pause. This lost second means that he will be forty- 
five feet behind at the winning-post — four good lengths. 
Another Indian sport is to ride up to a log hung horizon- 
tally and just high enough to allow the pony but not the 
rider to get under, touch it, and return. If the pony is 
stopped too soon, the Indian loses time in touching the 
log ; if too late, he gets scraped off. The sudden jerking 
of the pony on its haunches is sure eventually both to start 
curbs or spavin, and to break his knees. Still the pony 
retains wonderfully good legs considering. 

The toughness and strength of the plains pony can 
scarcely be exaggerated. He will live through a winter 
that will kill the hardiest cattle. He worries through the 
long months when the snow has covered up the bunch- 
grass on a diet of cotton-wood boughs, which the Indian 
cuts down for him; and though he emerges from this 
ordeal a pretty sorry specimen of a horse, it takes but a 
few weeks in the spring for him to get himself into splen- 
did condition and fit for the trials of the war-path. His 
fast has done him good, as some say sea-sickness will do 
him good who goes down to the sea in ships. He can go 
unheard-of distances. Colonel Dodge records an instance 
coming under his observation where a pony carried the 
mail three hundred miles in three consecutive nights, and 



OUR CLIMATE 43 

back over the same road the next week, and kept this up 
for six months without loss of condition. He can carry 
any weight. Mr. Parkman speaks of a chief known as 
Le Cochon, on account of his three hundred pounds avoir- 
dupois, who, nevertheless, rode his ponies as bravely as a 
man of half the bulk. He as often carries two people as 
one. There is simply no end to this wonderful product of 
the prairies. He works many years. So long as he will 
fat up in the spring, his age is immaterial to the Indian. 

It has been claimed by some that the American climate 
is, par excellence, adapted to the horse. California and 
Kentucky vie for superiority, and both produce such won- 
derful results as "Sunol" and "Nancy Hanks." Man cer- 
tainly has done wonders with the horse upon our soil ; and 
alone the horse has done wonders for himself. I have 
sought for great performances by horses in every land. 
One hears wonderful traditions of speed and endurance 
and much unsupported testimony elsewhere ; but for re- 
corded distance and time, America easily bears off the palm. 
We shall recur to this point hereafter. Ever since Brown- 
Sequard discovered that he could not always kill an Ameri- 
can rabbit by inserting a probe into its brain, and enunci- 
ated the doctrine of the superior energy and endurance of 
the American mammal, facts have been accumulating to 
prove his position sound. 

One peculiarity of the pony is his absence of crest. His 
ewe-neck suggests the curious query of what has become 
of the high, well-shaped neck of his ancestor the Barb. I 
was on the point of saying arched neck — but this is the 
one thing which the Arabian or Barb rarely has, being 
ridden with a bit which keeps his nose in the air. But he 
has a peculiarly fine neck and wide, deep, open throttle of 
perfect shape, and with bit and bridoon carries his head 
just right. There are two ways of accounting for the 



44 EWE-NECKS 

ewe-neck. The Indian's gag-bit, invariably applied with 
a jerk, throws up the pony's head instead of bringing it 
down, as the slow and light application of the school-curb 
will do, and this, it is thought by many, tends to develop 
the ewe-neck. But this is scarcely a theory which can be 
borne out by the facts, for the Arabian retains his fine 
crest under the same course of treatment. A more suffi- 
cient reason may be found in the fact that the starvation 
which the pony annually undergoes in the winter months 
tends to deplete him of every superfluous ounce of flesh 
wherever it may lie. The crest in the horse is mostly 
meat, and its annual depletion, never quite replaced, has 
finally brought down the Indian pony's neck nearer to the 
outline of the skeleton. It was with much ado under his 
scant diet that the pony held on to life during the winter ; 
he could not scrape together enough food to flesh up a 
merely ornamental appendage like a crest. Most Moors 
and Arabs, on the other hand, prize the beauty of the high- 
built neck, and breed for it ; and their steeds are far bet- 
ter fed. There is rarely snow where they dwell ; forage 
of some kind is to be had in the oases, and the master al- 
ways stores up some barle}^ and straw for his steed ; or in 
case of need will starve his daughters to feed his mares. 
The Indian cares for his pony only for what he can do 
for him, and once lost, the crest would with difficulty be 
replaced, for few Indians have any conception of breeding. 
The bronco's mean crest is distressing, but it is in inverse 
ratio to his endurance and usefulness. Well fed and cared 
for, he will regain his crest to a marked extent. 

As we shall later see when we reach the land of the 
pure -bred Arabian, there are many more points of simi- 
larity than are generally supposed to exist between this 
steed of royal lineage and his country cousin across the 
sea. The city dwellers, or those who live near enough to 



AN ARABIAN BRONCO 45 

the busy haunts of men to cater to the wants of the 
Franks who "have an eye for a horse," breed a well- 
rounded, up-headed fellow — the one we all see painted. 
But the real Arabian mare — the Anazeh — the progenitress 
of all that is fast and enduring, the worshipped of the 
sons of the Prophet, is quite another creature. She is for 
all the world like a small thorough-bred in training — or a 
bronco. But that, again, is another story. 



From one kind of bronco we will skip to another. The 
Indian must have transportation as well as riding ponies, 
and as the patient ass is the follower of Mohammed, so is 
the travaux (or traineau) pony to the Indian. It is hard 
to say which bears the most load according to his capac- 
ity, the donkey or the pony. On the whole, perhaps, 
weight for weight, the palm must be awarded to the ass ; 
but either earns what he gets with fourfold more right 
than his master. The burdens the ass bears in the Orient 
break him down to the extent of forgetting how to kick. 
Fancy driving even an overworked Kentucky mule by the 
tail, as they do the donkey in many parts of the East, and 
guiding him by a tweak of that appendage, close to his 
treacherous heels ! In a later chapter I shall sing paeans 
to this noblest of the equine race. 

The travaux pony is equally worked out of all idea of 
bucking. He furnishes the sole means of transportation 
of the Indian camp, except sometimes a dog hitched to a 
diminutive traineau, and managed — half for sport, half 
work — by a boy ; and, weight for weight, drags on his 
tepee-poles more than the best mule in Uncle Sam's serv- 
ice does on an army-wagon. When camp is broken, the 
squaws strip the tent-poles of their buffalo-skin coverings, 
and it is these poles which furnish the wheels of the Ind- 
ian vehicle. Vehicle is, perhaps, an odd term to us who 
make the word synonymous with rotary progression ; but 
vehicles on runners are to-day used at all seasons in many 




THE TRAVAUX PONY 



TRAVAUX SADDLES 40 

parts of the Cumberland Mountains. They are of domes- 
tic manufacture, and are simply constructed of bent sap- 
lings lashed with green withes. As a rule, a cow or 
young steer is hitched singly into these sleds, which run 
with light loads all over the country — on mud roads in 
summer, and but for a short while on snow in midwinter. 
I have talked with old men in Eastern Kentucky who had 
never seen a wheel. That sounds odd, but it is true. 

The Blackfoot makes the neatest trappings for the tra- 
vaux ponies and pack-saddles. The pony is fitted with a 
huge leathern bag, heavily fringed and gaudy with red and 
blue flannel strips and beads of many colors. Over this 
goes the pack-saddle, which is not very dissimilar to the 
riding-saddle ; but it is of coarser build, and has a perpen- 
dicular pommel and cantle. In the pommel is a notch to 
receive one end of the tepee-poles, which are sometimes 
bound together two or three on each side, and, trailing 
past either flank of the pony, are held in place by two 
pieces of wood lashed to them just behind his tail and a. 
bit farther back. In the socket so made rides the par- 
fleche, a sort of rawhide trunk, and this receives the camp 
utensils — plunder, children, sometimes an old man or wom- 
an, puppies, and all the other camp impedimenta — while 
a squaw rides behind the pack-saddle on the pony, indif- 
ferently astride or side wise, with her feet on the poles, 
and perhaps a youngster bestrides its neck. Thus laden, 
the wonderful little beast, which is rarely up to fourteen 
hands, plods along all day, covering unheard-of distances^ 
and living on what bunch-grass he can pick up in spare 
moments, with a mouthful of water now and again. 

There are apt to be several ponies to carry the plunder 
of the occupants of one tepee, and often one of them is 
loaded down with the rougher stuff, while a second may 
be decked out with the finery and carry only one squaw — 



50 SQUAW EIDERS 

particularly if she happens to be a new purchase and a 
favorite of the chief. 

A squaw is usually about as good a horseman as her 
buck, and rides his saddle or bareback with as much ease 
as a city woman rocks in her chair. She is often as plucky 
as he is. Indeed, it is not uncommon to find women in the 
fighting ranks, and doing a man's full duty ; and if the 
squaw does not often join her lord in the killing and capt- 
ure of the enemy, she can out-do him at all times in cru- 
elty to prisoners. Perhaps no human being is so fiendish 
in the pastime of torturing prisoners as an Indian squaw. 
She out-herods Herod in barbarity. 



XI 

The Comanche of the Fort Sill region is a good type 
of the Indian of to-day. He is the most expert horse- 
stealer on the plains, if we can credit the Indians them- 
selves, who yield to him the palm as a sneak thief — with 
them a title of honor rather than of reproach. There is 
no boldness or dash in his method, but he is all the more 
dangerous. The Indian has been much misconceived. It 
is not strange that many novelists should have taken him 
as the hero of their books ; few readers could check off 
their errors, and he was a new character who served as a 
vehicle for any number of qualities which might best fit 
into any given plot. Bat the red man has been as much 
overwrought as the Arabian horse. He is a brute, pure 
and simple, and has practically always been so. If you 
want the truth about him, consult people who have spent 
their lives among his ilk, not those who theorize on be- 
nevolent general principles at a judiciously safe distance. 
Read Our Wild Indians, and you will know more about 
him than most of those who think his vices are all attribu- 
table to the white man. 

Not that we can avoid responsibility for much that is 
evil in the red man — vile disease of body and mind and 
character ; but he is none the less a brute whose nature 
is a fit hot-bed for our worst vices. It is politics and dol- 
lars which have used him as a shuttlecock. The Indian 
problem is reducible to the simple question whether this 
broad land of ours is for the pale-face or the redskin. If, 



m INDIAN FOOD 

&s elsewhere, civilization has here a right to extend the 
borders of its garments, the white man is responsible only 
for his excess of wrong — for the manner, not the fact of 
his taking. This excess is no greater than that attribu- 
table to any other nation which seizes and civilizes a bar- 
barous land ; and, after all is said, the Indian is more sin- 
ning than sinned against. He is and remains the most 
vicious brute the sun ever shone upon. 

The Comanche eats dog and horse flesh — as all Indians 
do more or less — and is by no means above a diet of skunk 
when other edibles fail him. Indeed, anything is chuck 
to the Indian in case of need, and while he has his bonne 
louche, it is, as a rule, quantity and not quality he seeks. 

The Comanche is fond of gay clothes, and has a trick 
of wrapping a sheet around his body, doubling in the 
ends, and letting the rest fall about his legs. This gives 
him the look of wearing the skirts or leg-gear of the Ori- 
ental. He uses a Texas cowboy's tree, a wooden stirrup, 
into which he thrusts his foot as far as a fox-hunter, and 
leathers even longer than the cowboy's, perhaps the long- 
est used by any rider. He is the only Indian who rides 
after this fashion. He, if any one, has the forked-radish 
seat. Between him and his saddle he packs all his extra 
blankets and most of his other plunder, so that he is some- 
times perched high above his mount. For bridle and bit, 
he uses whatever he can beg, borrow, or steal. 

In one particular the Comanche is noteworthy. He 
knows more about a horse and horse-breeding than any 
other Indian. It strikes one as rather singular that the 
redskin has never developed an instinct for raising horses. 
And yet it is not strange. The conditions themselves 
have done so much for the bronco, and until of late years 
wild ponies have been so easily procurable in unlimited 
numbers, that he has not yet been pushed into breeding. 



. 










MODERN COMANCHE 



"PINTO" HORSES 55 

And it is a rule with the red man not to do the unneces- 
sary. u Never do to-day what you can by any possibility 
put off till to-morrow " may be said to be his motto — ex- 
cept on the war-path. Is it alone his ? 

The Comanche is particularly wedded to and apt to 
ride a pinto (" painted " or piebald) horse, and never keeps 
any but a pinto stallion. He chooses his ponies well, and 
shows more good sense in breeding than one would give 
him credit for. The corollary to this is that he is far less 
cruel to his beasts, and though he begins to use them as 
yearlings, the ponies often last through many years. In 
this he resembles his Oriental brother. Yearlings are very 
frequently seen under saddle among the Arabs. The Co- 
manche is capable of making as fine cavalry as exists, if 
subjected to discipline and carefully drilled. But the 
process may be difficult. 



XII 



The Apache of the present day is the exact reverse of 
the Comanche. His habitat is the Sierra Madre Mount- 
ains in Arizona. He is not born and bred with horses, he 
knows little about them, and looks upon ponies as in- 
tended rather for food than for transportation or the war- 
path ; or, at all events, as ultimately destined for the cui- 
sine. He at times outdoes the Frenchman in hippophagy, 
for he will eat every one of his ponies during the winter, 
and rely upon stealing fresh ones in the spring. He and 
the Cheyenne are the most dashing of the Indian horse- 
thieves. He raids down in Chihuahua, where the va- 
queros raise stock for the Mexican army, and often drives 
off large numbers. When pursued, the Apache takes to 
the mountains, and is not infrequently compelled to aban- 
don his herd. But such is his expert boldness that he 
rarely lacks a supply at his neighbor's expense. Not con- 
tent with ponies, he steals his saddle and bridle in Mex- 
ico ; he wears spurs when he can get them to drive on his 
pony, and if these do not suffice to make him go his gait, 
he will goad him with a knife. The Apache is hideously 
cruel by nature, even more so than other Indians, if this 
were possible ; and his pony is often the sufferer. He 
takes no particular interest in him. Except for his sum- 
mer's use and his winter's salt-junk, the pony has no fut- 
ure value. He takes a certain care of him only for the 
present value of the little fellow. In the mountains, where 
the sharp, flinty stones wear down the pony's unshod feet, 



RAWHIDE SHOES 59 

this Indian will shrink rawhide over the hoofs in lieu of 
shoes, and this resists extremely well the attrition of the 
mountain paths. Arrian, of Mcomedia, tells us that the 
Macedonians, under Alexander, did the same to their cav- 
alry horses in the Hindoo Koosh, and no doubt the habit 
was much older than Alexander. On the whole, the 
Apache, quoad horses, is at the foot of the scale. There 
can be no comparative excellence to the Indian as a 
whole; it is comparative badness. In this, too, the 
Apache reaches the superlative. 

In what I say anent the Indian I may perchance be ac- 
cused of what many intelligent judges would call a crim- 
inal unwillingness to understand a really noble nature. 
But, so far as my experience goes, those men who main- 
tain that the faults of the Indian are chargeable solely to 
the whites, and that he can be managed in any other way 
than by repression, either view the situation from an in- 
experienced and safe distance, or from a financial (i. e. 
Indian contract) stand - point, or from one of " practical 
politics." There are men, benevolent and noble men, who, 
after studying the subject, truly believe that the Indian 
can be civilized ; but they only serve to prove the rule. 
Those men who have spent their lives among the Indians, 
and have nothing to make out of them, hold but one opin- 
ion. Narrow politics and the money in it are the curse of 
our country. If the Indian could be given over to the 
army to care for he would behave himself, for he knows 
that he receives justice, both in peace and war, from the 
blue-coats. But so long as Indian agents can grow rich 
fast, and there are a lot of fat jobs for the men who vote 
the successful ticket, so long will the Indian be cheated 
out of his rations, go on the war-path in revenge, and be 
doomed to fall under the sabre of the unwilling soldier. 
If there is or ever has been a more lamentable spectacle 



60 



THE TRUE INDIAN 



in the political life of any nation than the cross-purposes 
of our Indian and War Departments, I have failed to find 
it. We Americans, thanks to the inexhaustible riches of 
our soil, are giants in all we do; and we are giants in 
folly as well as in creation ; witness our Silver Bill, our 
McKinley Tariff, our Pension Legislation, and our Indian 
Problem. 



XIII 

Previous to our Civil War, the lack of knowledge 
abroad with regard to the United States was singular. 
We were ignored in the economy of nations, in the 
schools and society of the Old World, as of no impor- 
tance. To most people America was as yet undiscovered. 
Only the most advanced thinkers had divined that we 
w r ere working out the problem of the future. To see 
their countries become Americanized was the nightmare 
of rulers, as it is now the dream of the more intelligent 
of the peoples. The blot of slavery was still upon us, and 
we were numerically among the smaller nations. When, 
sent to a monastic school in Belgium at the age of ten, 
I was led into the petite cour and introduced by the 
Pere Superieur to the crowd of eagerly expectant boys, 
" Tenez, mes enfants, voila votre nouveau camarade, le 
jeune Americain !" I well remember a fair-faced lad (he 
was a son of a banished Polish noble) who went up to 
the father and plucked him by his skirt, with " Mais, mon 
pere, il est blanc comme nous." His keen disappoint- 
ment at my not being black, for he had never seen a 
negro, he always rather laid up against me. And when 
later I attended the Friedrich-Werderschen Gymnasium 
in Berlin, the only two ideas I could ever find that boys 
of my age had assimilated out of the shreds and patches 
they had been taught about America, were Niagara and 
slavery. How much did a Massachusetts lad who had 
left home in his first decade know about slavery, or 



62 A PSYCHICAL PHENOMENON 

how many, in those stage-coach days, had been to the 
great falls ? " Ach, du bist kein Amerikaner," my play- 
mates would exclaim, " wenn du Niagaara nicht gesehen 
hast!" imagining, no doubt, that this world -famed cata- 
ract was at every man's back door. And my never even 
having seen a slave stamped me still more of an impostor. 

To wander for a moment from anything akin to horse- 
flesh or America, to what, if imaginative, I would trans- 
form into a psychical phenomenon : The little Polish noble 
before referred to and I became fast friends, and for years 
wandered arm in arm around the playground. Nearly 
forty years ago we separated, and neither, for four dec- 
ades, heard aught of the other, nor made any effort to 
hunt him up. In April last I landed at Constantinople — 
as usual with tourists out of money — and repaired at 
once to my bankers. My letter of credit and draft went 
into Mr. A's private office for approval. Almost at once 
out he came with, " Bless me, you are the very man !" 
"No doubt," I replied; "I always have been, but why 
just now V " Were you ever at school in Belgium ?" he 
asked. "Yes." "Did you have a school-mate named 

Ladislas Cz ski?" "Why, yes." "Well, he is now 

Mo er Pacha, Inspector-General of Cavalry, and Aide- 

de - camp to H. I. M. the Sultan, and only last week he 
told me he once had a school-mate named Theodore Dodge, 
and asked me to write to my correspondents in America 
and see if I could find trace of him !" Here, then, had 
my ancient school- friend, for the first time in forty years, 
sought to hunt me up, and I, for the first time in my life, 
had turned up at Constantinople. And yet it was mere 
coincidence. Is not this such stuff as dreams are made 
of — or superstition, or psychology? How easy to warp 
this occurrence into something, let us say, spooky ! 

The ignorance on the part of Europeans concerning 



OUR CAVALRY 63 

us was, however, in nowise more curious, and was much 
less culpable, than our own ignorance of to - day respect- 
ing our South American neighbors, despite even the Pan- 
Americans. How many of us can tell the form of gov- 
ernment of half the South American States, or their 
geographical features or limits, or their chief products, 
or their population, or climate, or even their capital cities, 
unless he is still in the grammar-school. 

Our Civil War wrought a change. We hewed our- 
selves into notice by the doughtiest blows delivered in 
war since the era of Napoleon. Yet were the most con- 
servative among the military autocrats of Europe unwill- 
ing, till towards the very end, to look upon us in any 
other light than as armed mobs, and even in the war of 
'66 they declined to profit by our experience. But by 
18 TO the Germans, with their keen instinct for war and 
more numerous ties with the States, had adopted many 
of the methods we had first devised, and to-day, not 
only are our campaigns studied as samples (of good and 
bad alike, as almost all campaigns must be), but fair jus- 
tice is done to our actual merit in the province of war, 
and to the exceptional ability of some American generals. 

Among other ideas, they have borrowed from the ver- 
satility of our cavalry arm. Cavalry which fought on 
foot had been sneered at for generations. It could not, 
said the beaux sabreurs, be even good mounted infantry. 
A cavalryman of this ilk must "ride like a hinfantry 
hadjutant." He was of hybrid growth — neither fish, flesh, 
nor good red-herring; and this, though history, among 
other instances, shows us that Alexander's Companions — 
as at Sangala, modern Lahore — dismounted and took in- 
trenchments from which even his phalanx had recoiled, 
while no body of five thousand cavalry ever held its own 
in pitched battle so long by virtue of repeated and vigor- 



64 IRREGULAR HORSE 

ous charges, and with such heavy losses, as the Compan- 
ions at the Hydaspes. We Americans were wiser ; our 
cavalry was well suited to our needs, and when it became 
worthy the name, was singularly effective on our peculiar 
terrain. Our Western cavalry is now the pattern of the 
cavalry of the future. Even Prussia is about to abolish 
the peculiar scope of its cuirassiers, whose uniform Bis- 
marck has so long honored, and cavalry will soon become 
largely irregular — if a regular dragoon, who mostly skir- 
mishes on foot and rarely charges in the saddle, may be 
so dubbed. 



XIV 

Our frontier cavalryman is the beau ideal of an irreg- 
ular. The irregular horseman of all ages was recruited 
from among roving, unintelligent classes, and had, except 
in his own peculiar province, as plentiful a lack of good 
as he had a superabundance of bad qualities. Our trooper 
is intelligent, and trained in the hardest of schools. Few 
civilians, who find it so easy to criticise the operations of 
the army in the West, would make much of a success in 
hunting a band of a few hundred Indians in a pathless or 
a waterless desert bigger than ISTew York and New Eng- 
land combined. And yet, thus handicapped, what splen- 
did work our cavalry has done ! While one civil depart- 
ment of the Government has for years been busy sowing 
the seeds of strife and furnishing the red man with arms 
of precision, the best of cartridges and plenty of them, 
how ably have our handful of blue-coats, under orders of 
another, managed to quell the Indian uprisings ! A force 
of fifty thousand men constantly on foot, said that eminent 
soldier, William Tecumseh Sherman (and he early made his 
mark in estimating the number needed for a bigger piece 
of work), would have been none too great to do justice to 
our Indian problem since the war; the actual force has 
been less than a third of this number. Let whoso is 
tempted to criticise the army make himself familiar with 
some of the deeds of heroism of the past twenty years by 
our soldiers on the plains. Criticism blanches before 
their recital. But the soldier is no boaster: you must 
seek his story from other lips than his. 

5 



66 INDIAN COURAGE 

When in the field the cavalryman is allowed some lati- 
tude in suiting his dress to his own ideas of comfort, while 
kept within certain regulation bounds. It is thus our art- 
ist has represented him. He is apt to wear a soft hat — 
there is no better campaigning hat than the slouch, as 
thousands of old soldiers can testify — and boots ad lib. ; 
his uniform is patterned .on his own individuality after a 
few days 1 march. His enormous saddle-bags are much 
better filled at the start than at the finish, and a couple 
of canteens with the indispensable tin cup are slung at the 
cantle. His sabre he considers less useful than a revolver, 
and in a charge it is a question whether the latter be not 
by far the preferable weapon. Against Indians it certain- 
ly is so ; for while your Indian is occasionally heroic be- 
yond what the white man ever dreams, as a rule he is 
cowardly beyond belief, and you can rarely reach him 
with the naked blade. Cornered, or frenzied by supersti- 
tion or passion or tribal pride, his constancy is marvel- 
lous ; in open fight he will often shirk danger like the 
veriest poltroon. Like Sir Boyle Koche's Irishman, he 
would rather be a coward for five minutes than a dead 
man all his life. 

]STo experience the trooper could possibly have could be 
a better training than Indian warfare, and at the end of 
his enlistment the intelligent cavalryman has perhaps no 
equal as a light dragoon. He labors under some serious 
disadvantages. His horse is an American, i.e., one which 
comes from the States, and is in nowise allied to the 
bronco. This horse is larger and stronger, but less hardy, 
needs to be acclimated, and never can acquire the old hard 
stomach of the plains pony. Used to grain, he more 
speedily breaks down under lack of forage, and he is 
vastly overweighted. The cavalry pack is very heavy 
for pursuit of a foe who has nothing but his own precious 






J 1 It- 




UNITED 8TATTCS CAVALRYMAN 



THE AMERICAN HORSE 69 

carcass to transport, and never spares his many ponies, as 
the soldier must his single horse. It has been suggested 
that the California horse be tried, and in the South-west 
this has been done, but without such results as to satisfy 
all authorities. The California horse is small — fourteen 
and a half to fifteen hands — weighs under nine hundred 
pounds, and cannot well carry a heavy trooper and pack 
whose weight overruns two hundred and thirty pounds. 
But given light men of not exceeding a hundred and forty 
pounds, recruited in the South-west, given a pack reduced 
to the lowest limits, this horse would be of the greatest 
utility. He is acclimated, has the much -enduring stom- 
ach of the old stock, is more active, and does not so soon 
get used up. 

In thus criticising the American horse, it will not do to 
underrate him. He is capable of very great feats of en- 
durance. Without question, the hardest continuous dis- 
tance rides are those habitually performed by our cavalry 
on the plains. This is partly due to the exceptional 
knowledge of the capacity of the horse to perform w T hich 
our cavalry officers have acquired in their hard service, 
but partly also to the horse himself. And when we note 
that this animal is the common country horse, bought by 
the Government at a low price — the horse which will not 
command a price high enough to be worth sending far to 
market — it speaks well for the quality of our American 
stock. After a second summer in the ranks he becomes 
used to exceptional feats, and can be kept on hard service 
without grain for a month. 

Considering all the circumstances — that the cavalry re- 
cruit is often a city-bred lad, who knows practically noth- 
ing about a horse, and has to be taught it all ; that he 
is employed too much on duties which unfit him for his 
work ; that he as well as his horse has to be acclimated ; 



70 OUR CAVALRY SEAT 

and that the whole business which is new to him is an 
old story to the Indian — it is astonishing how well he 
does. His performances reflect unlimited credit upon his 
superiors. And when he has learned his business, he is 
certainly not surpassed by any cavalryman who bestrides 
a saddle. 

Our cavalry seat in its best form is perhaps as good as 
can be. For long marches the saddle is comfortable, and 
the leathers are about the proper length for the work. It 
is neither the one extreme nor the other. You see some 
cavalrymen with stirrups altogether too long ; but the 
Avell-trained United States trooper has as good a seat as 
any rider can have. I think it may be admitted that 
however good for rough-riding or for cross-countiy work, 
or racing, or polo, the English saddle may be, it is not as 
good for long-distance riding as a correct form of what 
we call a cavalry-tree. When a man sits in a saddle for 
thirty or forty consecutive hours, with but a few minutes' 
relief at a time, he can do better in a tree less long and 
flat. With some commands it is usual to girth a horse far 
back, so as to get the saddle well away from the withers, 
much as they do in most foreign armies, and thus save 
the weight from bearing too much on the fore-quarters ; 
but the usefulness of the habit is still an open question. 
The place where the United States trooper rides is not 
far from the place where a man who sits in the middle of 
an English saddle rides. It is the withers which should 
determine the position of the saddle ; and as the girth al- 
ways slips more or less, it is the make of the tree and the 
way the saddle fits and the slant of the horse's shoulder 
which determine where the weight shall be. Some horses 
are bound to carry their weight more forward than oth- 
ers. If you seek to alter the place, you must alter the 
tree or look out for sore backs. 



ARMY HATERS 71 

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. The skill of 
the soldier is measured by his performance. It is no 
doubt natural that we Americans should be a nation of 
army haters, but it is a pity that for the scruple of thanks 
our little regular army ever gets there should be so many 
ounces of grumbling. Uncle Sam has no public servants 
who work so faithfully and endure such hardships and 
danger. Why should sixty -five million Americans still 
harbor an inherited rancor against thirty thousand of our 
own countrymen because they professionally wear a 
uniform? The volunteers were always the pets of the 
nation ; the regulars come in for more than their share of 
abuse. And yet what generals won our battles ? What 
troops stood such decimation \ That a volunteer deserves 
a certain credit beyond a regular for equal service no one 
will be found to dispute ; but let us not forget the one in 
the services of the other. 



XV 

What has this to do with horsemanship, say you? 
True, we seem to have wandered ; but we can retrace our 
steps. Let me quote some isolated facts quite apart from 
the Civil War, to show that our cavalrymen on Indian 
service have not only stout hearts under their army blue, 
but stout seats in the saddle as well, and earn credit for 
them both. Mention need not be made of the risk everv 
scouting party or detachment runs of perishing in an 
Indian ambush, like Custer or Forsyth ; nor of horrible 
marches of many days with the thermometer at 40° be- 
low zero, like the command of Henry, when the bulk of 
the men were frozen to death, or frost-bitten so as to lose 
their feet and hands. Let us look at some good distance 
riding, for it is in this that our men especially excel. 

But to do this calls out another side issue by reminding 
us of the celebrated ride between Berlin and Vienna, and 
we may as well recall its incidents. There has been much 
honestly severe criticism of this noteworthy performance. 

"But what good came of it at last? 
Said little Peterkin. 
Why, that I cannot tell, said he. 
But 'twas a famous victory." 

Let us view it from every side. 

Imprimis : so far as the endurance of the riders is con- 
cerned it counts for nothing. The best time was three 
hundred and fifty miles in three days — a mere trifle. 



AMERICAN VITALITY 73 

Why, in 1858, J. Powers rode one hundred and fifty miles 
in six hours and forty-three minutes in San Francisco ; 
in 1868, N. H. Mowry rode, on the San Francisco race- 
track, in the sight of gathered thousands, three hundred 
miles in fourteen hours, nine minutes ; and one Anderson, 
in the same city, rode one thousand three hundred and 
four miles in ninety hours. The fact that these men fre- 
quently changed horses only adds to the splendid charac- 
ter of the feat, so far as the man is concerned. But this 
is not all there is to the Berlin- Vienna ride. 

Many years ago Dr. Brown-Sequard, in a lecture to a 
Harvard class, was illustrating how instantaneously death 
followed any lesion to brain tissue or spinal marrow. " I 
insert my probe between the vertebras of this rabbit," said 
he, taking up a specimen which was nibbling at a cabbage 
on the table before him, " and you see that it at once ex- 
pires." The doctor's remark was, to his surprise, followed 
by a general titter throughout the class, for, though he 
had duly suited his action to his words, when he laid it 
down the rabbit went as calmly at the cabbage again as 
if not in the slightest degree inconvenienced. This singu- 
lar fact and other similar ones which he later noticed 
here, but had never observed among European animals, 
led Dr. Brown-Sequard, after careful tests, to enunciate 
the theory that the mammal of North America has more 
vitality than that of Europe. This theory is supported 
by many facts, and was fairly proven sound by the nu- 
merous cases of recovery from extraordinary capital oper- 
ations during our Civil War, when the antiseptic method 
was unknown. It has now been accepted by all who have 
studied the subject. The word " vitality," thus used, we 
understand to mean the ability to perform exceptional 
physical feats, or to endure excessive hardship without 
death or material injury. 



74 THE BERLIN-VIENNA RIDE 

The ride of these seven-score army officers between Ber- 
lin and Vienna has two interesting aspects : the amount 
of endurance of the animals ridden, and the judgment of 
the riders as to the capacity of their horses to perform. 
How these two items compare with what our cavalry is 
daily experiencing on the plains is a fruitful subject of in- 
quiry. 

As the crow flies, it is three hundred and twenty-five 
English miles from Berlin to Vienna. By the road it is 
variously called three hundred and fifty to three hundred 
and seventy ; it is certainly short of the latter distance. 
Count Stahremberg, the winner, covered the distance from 
Vienna to Berlin (which, owing to the mountainous sec- 
tion being crossed in the early part of the ride, is easier 
than the course from Berlin to Vienna) in some minutes 
less than three days. Three other men came in within 
three days and three hours. The best German rider, Lieu- 
tenant Reitzenstein, took a trifle over seventy-three and 
one-half hours. This sounds like a set of wonderful per- 
formances. Are they really so % 

The race was go-as-you-please. The riders successively 
started from Vienna or Berlin at different hours, and rode 
at any gait or speed, and by any road they chose. The 
horses were the very best ; no one not owning a horse 
noted for unusual endurance would have been fool enough 
to enter. There were many thorough-breds, many native 
horses, Prussians and Hungarians, some ponies from the 
Carpathian and Transylvanian uplands. The animals had 
all been prepared by weeks of careful training. They car- 
ried the least possible weight — the winner, e.g., rides but one 
hundred and twenty-eight pounds, plus saddle and bridle. 
The roads were the very best. Under these most favor- 
able conditions the winner rode one hundred and twenty 
miles a day for three consecutive days ; the others less. 



A WONDERFUL PONY 75 

There has been a disposition among Anglo-Saxons 
to underrate this performance. The large number of 
horses killed or foundered with good right distresses our 
sense of pure sport. But for all that it was a famous ride, 
though open to serious criticism. Any horse ridden one 
hundred and twenty-five miles in twenty-four hours per- 
forms a great feat ; one ridden two hundred miles in forty- 
eight hours, a greater; to ride three hundred and fifty 
miles in three days or a bit over is little short of marvel- 
lous, if you bring the horse in free from permanent in- 
jury. But there's the rub, and it is on this point that 
there is a word to say. 

Comparisons may be odorous, as Mrs. Malaprop avers, 
but they are interesting and useful. Few people out of 
the Army know just what our cavalry is capable of, and 
this ride affords an opportunity, not to be lightly neglect- 
ed, to point a moral and adorn a tale. 

The nearest approach to the Stahremberg ride by an 
American which we can at the moment recall is that of 
the pony which Colonel Richard I. Dodge personally 
knew, and which I have already mentioned. His owner 
was a professional express rider, who carried the mail 
from El Paso to Chihuahua, thither once a week and 
back the next. As the country was infested by Apaches, 
the man had to ride by night and hide by day. His prac- 
tice was to ride the distance, three hundred miles, in three 
consecutive nights, and rest his pony four days between 
trips. " Six months of this work had not diminished the 
fire or flesh of that wonderful pony," says Colonel Dodge. 
It is true that three hundred miles is not three hundred 
and fifty, but this pony — probably not over fourteen hands, 
and with rider, mail, and the usual plains trappings, carry- 
ing at lowest two hundred pounds — used to make the 
three hundred miles in some sixty hours (i.e. three nights 



76 THOROUGH-BRED VS. PONY 

and the intervening two days), an equal average rate of 
speed as that of Stahremberg and a much higher rate while 
going, and no one pretends that the Count or any other 
of the Berlin- Vienna riders could have turned round and 
done the same thing over again the succeeding week; 
whereas this little marvel kept on doing it every week 
for six months, and no one knows how much longer, over 
a country having no roads deserving the name, by night, 
and feeding only on bunch-grass. Which of the two is 
the better performance? This one cannot, perhaps, be 
equalled ; but to ride and repeat nearly as great distances 
has never been and is not to - day considered an excep- 
tional thing on the plains. 

And if this pony outdid the winner of the great Ger- 
man race, by how far does he outrank the losers ? The 
horse ridden by Count Stahremberg was brought in in 
fairly good condition, but died within a day or two. The 
horse of the German winner died. A very high percent- 
age of the others either died or broke down midway, or 
were ridden home moribund or ruined. They were kept 
up, on dit, by all kinds of stimulants and nostrums on the 
road. No accounts have reached us showing the condi- 
tion of the horses' backs under the saddle, always a prime 
proof of careful or unintelligent treatment. In fact, the 
number of dead or maimed animals seems to be purposely 
suppressed. That it was the ponies which came in with 
the least injury will not surprise our Western men. While 
a thorough-bred may outpace a pony, a ride which will 
kill him will not permanently disable the little runt of 
the prairie. The latter's ancestry has had to struggle 
with too much hardship to be easily killed, while the 
thorough-breds have been warmly housed and artificially 
handled. The pony's heritage is to do and endure ; the 
thorough-bred's to make pace. 



XVI 

JS~ow, it may be interesting to give a few rides of our 
own cavalry on the plains, not as a contrast, but as a 
matter which all horsemen should be glad to know. 

In 1879 several single couriers with the news of his 
imminent danger rode from Thornburg's " rat-hole" to 
General Merritt's column, one hundred and seventy miles, 
in less than twenty-four hours. The exact time of each 
was not taken. Rescue was more important than rec- 
ords. In 1891 two troopers of the Eighth Cavalry rode 
with despatches one hundred and ten miles in twenty 
hours, and Captain Fountain rode eighty -four miles in 
eight hours, and one hundred and ten miles in twenty- 
three. In 1876 Colonel Lawton rode from Red Cloud 
Agency, Nebraska, to Sidney Station, Nebraska, one hun- 
dred and twenty-five miles, with despatches for General 
Crook, in twenty-six hours. Rides of from one hundred 
and twenty to one hundred and fifty miles have repeatedly 
been made within the day and night by our ordinary 
troop-horses when not specially prepared for the work, 
and over very bad ground, and it is extremely rare that 
they have suffered serious injuiy. 

There are few three-day rides by single horsemen which 
can readily be quoted; but other performances may be 
given, which are akin to this one. We put aside all mere 
hearsay rides. Of these there is no end ; but it is well 
to put on record only such rides as are proven by official 
reports, and of which the distances can be measured by 
clear evidence: 



78 OUR CAVALRY HORSE 

It is plain that one man or horse travelling alone can 
go much farther or faster than two travelling together, 
and the more the individuals the slower the speed. The 
speed and endurance of a troop is that of the poorest horse. 
Extra weight infinitely adds to a horse's task and dimin- 
ishes his course, and his capacity to go depends upon the 
chance to feed, water, and care for him suitably on the 
road. It is in marching 1 detachments over oreat distances, 
under exceptionally difficult conditions, that our cavalry 
officers show peculiar success. Perhaps a knowledge of 
pace and the instinctive feel of the horse's condition is the 
highest grade of horsemanship. Civilians are wont to 
think that to play polo, or hunt, or win a race over the 
flat or over sticks, or perform high-school airs demand the 
highest skill ; but let any one undertake to ride a horse, or, 
better, to lead a troop one hundred miles in twenty-four 
hours, and despite all he may have learned in peaceful 
sports, he will find his knowledge of real horsemanship dis- 
tinctly limited. Not all our cavalry officers are equally 
gifted, but some have made rides which are unsurpassed. 

It must be remembered that our cavalry horse is, ah 
origine, a very common fellow. He is bought by the Gov- 
ernment at a price which brings out mainly those ani- 
mals which are not quite good enough to command the 
top of the market, and are held for sale at a rather low 
figure. They go out to the plains, and are there got into 
condition while at work. They are not, as abroad, raised 
in studs boasting sires of the highest lineage. On the 
march the troop-horse carries very little less than two 
hundred and fifty pounds — eighty-eight pounds for equip- 
ment and baggage, and, say, one hundred and sixty for 
the rider. In camp he is well fed ; on the march he can- 
not always be, and he is watered at irregular intervals. 
All these things tell against him. 



A NOTEWORTHY RIDE 79 

In 1873 Colonel Mackenzie rode his command into 
Mexico after Lepan and Kickapoo Indians, beat them in 
a sharp fight, and returned across the border, making one 
hundred and forty-five miles in twenty-eight hours. In 
IS 71 he again rode his command into Mexico after horse- 
thieves, making there and back, eighty-five miles, in fif- 
teen hours. In 1880, Captain A. E. Wood, Fourth Cavalry, 
one of the most thorough horsemen I have ever known, 
rode, with eight men, in pursuit of a thieving deserter, one 
hundred and forty miles in thirty-one hours. Let him tell 
his own story. It shows just how the trick is done : 

" In the month of September, 1880, I was stationed at 
Fort Reno, Indian Territory; the paymaster had visited 
us, and in those days, after such a visit, some desertion 
was expected. 

" About noon one day the latter part of September, the 
post commander sent for and astonished me by stating 
that the first sergeant of his company — Twenty- third In- 
fantry — had deserted, taking with him a considerable 
amount of the company fund, and he wanted me to catch 
him if possible. He had discovered that the sergeant had 
bought one strong Indian pony and had stolen another. 

" The direction taken by the sergeant was not known, 
but under the circumstances I thought that he intended 
to reach the railroad as soon as possible. The nearest 
railroad was in Southern Kansas — the nearest point Ar- 
kansas City, one hundred and forty miles as the trail then 
went. I took a detail of two non-commissioned officers 
and six men from G troop, Fourth Cavalry. 

" The detail was taken from the roster, except the first 
sergeant of G troop, who asked to go with me ; the horses 
belonged to the riders; none were selected as especially 
qualified for the trip. I rode the same horse that I had 
been riding for months. 



SO CARE OP BACKS 

" I took two pack-mules witli the men's rations ; they 
were loaded with about eighty pounds each. We left the 
post at 1.35 p.m. The day was quite hot, and knowing 
Avhat was before me, I did not push the animals very hard 
for the first twenty-five miles, which distance Ave had made 
by 6 p.m. This distance brought us to Kingfisher Creek, 
where we halted for one hour — unsaddled, got some- 
thing to eat, let the horses roll and graze, then groomed 
their backs and legs, saddled up and started at 7 p.m. 

" We started and walked for thirty minutes, then took a 
trot for fifty minutes, when we dismounted and rested for 
ten minutes ; adjusted the saddles, mounted, and took the 
trot for fifty minutes, dismounted and walked for ten 
minutes. We thus trotted at about a six-mile gait for a 
little more than fifty minutes, and dismounted and walked 
for ten minutes, until 12 p.m., when we halted and rested 
for twenty minutes. We then mounted and kept up 
the trotting for fifty minutes, dismounting and walking 
for ten minutes, until about 4.50 a.m., a little after day- 
break, when we were so overcome with sleep that I al- 
lowed the men to dismount, unsaddle, and sleep for about 
an hour. My mind was so busy that I could not sleep 
much, so I awoke the men. We groomed the backs and 
rubbed the legs of the horses for a short time and re- 
sumed the journey as before. When we had gone about 
one hundred and twenty miles we again halted, unsaddled, 
let the horses rest, and made some coffee. This rest took 
three-quarters of an hour, after which we started and trav- 
elled as before until we reached Arkansas City at 8.30 p.m. 
— thirty-one hours. Men and horses were extremely tired ; 
one horse was quite lame in front. We rested the remain- 
der of the night, the next day and night, and then marched 
to Caldwell, Kansas, thirty-five miles, the succeeding day. 
We remained at Caldwell two nights and a day, and 



FAST TIME 81 

marched back to Fort Keno, a distance of one hundred 
and fifteen miles by ordinary marches. All but one horse 
seemed to be rested when we reached Caldwell. This 
horse was unserviceable when we reached Fort Beno, the 
others were apparently as good as ever. The above is 
a record of the hardest ride I ever undertook. The fa- 
tigue was very great ; but a good night's rest completely 
restored all of us. 

" At that time our mounts were purchased in Missouri 
and Kansas. The horse I rode was twelve years old ; the 
others were a little younger. I think that the horse that 
was rendered unserviceable was made so by bad riding. 
His rider was not a very good horseman, and rode too 
heavily forward. I tried to correct this, but it is impossi- 
ble to teach all the niceties of horsemanship on such a 
trip." 

In 1870 four men of Company H, First Cavalry, bore 
despatches from Fort Harney to Fort Warner, one hun- 
dred and forty miles, over a bad road — twenty of it sand 
— with little and bad water, in twenty-two hours, eighteen 
and a half of which was actual marching time. The horses 
were in such good condition at the end of the ride that 
after one day's rest the men started back, and made the 
home trip at the rate of sixty miles a day. In 1879 Cap- 
tain Dodge, with his troop, rode eighty miles in sixteen 
hours, and Lieutenant Wood, with his troop, rode seventy 
miles in twelve hours. In December, 1890, Captain Fechet, 
with troops F and G, Eighth Cavalry, left Fort Yates at 
midnight, reached Sitting Bull's camp, forty-five miles dis- 
tant, at 7.20 a.m., drove off his band, and rescued the sur- 
vivors of the Indian police who had arrested and in the 
melee killed Sitting Bull. The two troops then scouted 
the country for ten miles around and marched back, reach- 
ing Oak Creek at 2 p.m. — a total distance of eighty-five 



82 RAIDERS AND PURSUERS 

miles in fourteen hours. " The roads were frozen hard 
and half covered with ice and snow. At the end of the 
ride there was not a saddle-boil nor a broken-down horse 
or man." In 1880 Colonel Henry, with four troops, rode 
one hundred and eight miles in thirty-three hours, being 
in the saddle twenty-two hours. One horse dropped dead 
at the end of the march, but there was not a sore-backed 
horse in the regiment, and they started out again after a 
rest of twenty-four hours. The same command made a 
night march of fifty miles in ten hours. 

General Merritt in 1879, with four troops, and ham- 
pered by a battalion of infantry in wagons, rode one 
hundred and seventy miles to the relief of Payne in sixty- 
six and one -half hours, and reached the scene in prime 
order and ready to go into a fight. Yery long distances 
have been covered by cavalry regiments at the rate of 
sixty miles a day. Colonel Henry, an expert on this sub- 
ject, speaking of hardening the men and horses of a com- 
mand by a month's drills of from fifteen to twenty miles 
at rapid gaits, aptly says : " A cavalry command thus 
hardened, and with increased feeds, ought to be able to 
make fifty to sixty miles a day as long as required ; and 
to such a command one hundred miles in twenty -four 
hours ought to be easy. The horse, like the athlete, 
needs training, and when this is done his endurance is 
limited only by that of his rider." 

In 1877 General Miles organized in Arizona a plan for 
accustoming men and horses to severe work by rides 
across the plains by a party of " raiders," followed by 
another of "pursuers." The parties were usually about 
twenty strong. The pursuers were not allowed to start 
until eighteen hours after the raiders, but the raiders were 
bound to rest six hours after marching eighteen hours, 
and again twelve after marching twelve more. The pur- 



WHO WINS THE PRIZE? 83 

suers could " go as you please," but were ordered not to 
injure stock by hard riding. Of these rides, which are 
not under the spur of compulsion, a few may be given as 
of interest. On September 17th, Lieutenant Scott, Sixth 
Cavalry, and twenty-five men, started from Fort Stanton 
towards Fort Bayard, and was overtaken in forty-two and 
one half hours marching time, at a distance of one hun- 
dred and thirty miles. The pursuers, Lieutenant Persh- 
ing and twenty - seven men, made the one hundred and 
thirty miles in fifty -four and one -half hours from start 
to capture. On September 25th, Lieutenant McG-rath, 
Fourth Cavalry, and twenty-two men, started from Fort 
Bowie to Fort Apache ; he made one hundred and seven- 
ty-three miles in forty -two hours' marching time. On 
September 26-27, Lieutenant Scott and twenty-five men, 
in pursuit of Lieutenant Pershing, made one hundred and 
ten miles in twenty-six hours ten minutes. On Novem- 
ber 1-3, Lieutenant Pershing and twenty-two men, pur- 
suing Captain Wallace, made one hundred and thirty 
miles in fifty-seven hours. Captain Chaffee, in pursuit of 
Captain Kerr, made on September 24-25 seventy miles in 
twenty hours with seventeen men. 

These are but a few instances which any of our cavalry 
officers can duplicate from their own knowledge. I could 
quote very many more. Now, if we take the conditions 
under which these rides have been made, viz., a common- 
bred native troop horse, not always kept hard and ready 
for work ; the exceptional weight carried, for all but the 
courier work was done with full equipment ; the fact that 
most of the courses were over country without roads, or 
only trails, which are the merest apology for roads, and 
often hilly and badly cut up ; that the pace must be made 
for the slowest horses, and be such that weak factors in 
the troop shall be respected ; that the incentive was thir- 



84 THE SOLDIER'S PLUCK 

teen dollars a month and simple duty, and not a splendid 
money prize of five thousand dollars and the commenda- 
tion of emperors ; and, above all, that the commands have 
uniformly been brought in without injury to man or 
beast, we shall find matter for justifiable self -gratulat ion. 






XVII 

I have from youth been reasonably familiar with the 
performances of European cavalry, and have studied the 
Arabian horse in the French army in Algiers, and in his 
native haunts on the Libyan and Syrian deserts. I have 
sought assiduously for records of great performances ; but 
exceptional work is only called out by exceptional needs, 
and abroad these are apt to be wanting. Granted that 
the German cavalry, for example, is marvellously drilled ; 
that it has the stomach to fight has been a notorious fact 
ever since the days of Ziethen and Seidlitz. Granted 
that it can perform precise evolutions or charge without 
confusion on the battle-field in masses greater than our 
entire cavalry force ; yet this by no means reaches the 
heart of distance riding. Such a thing as our raider and 
pursuer drills would never be dreamed of in Germany. 
All our work on the plains tends to distance riding, and 
in no other regular army in the world does this obtain. 
The Austro-Hungarian cavalry is better fitted than the 
German for distance riding, and has, as a pattern, the 
steppes man and horse, who are unexcelled in this very 
thing. In Algeria, while the horse of the Nineteenth 
Corps d'Armee is all mounted on Arabians, there is apt to 
be no call for excessive marches, and there is no prepara- 
tion for them. The Spahis, or light cavalrymen of native 
birth, are in constant movement all over the country, but 
they have the true Oriental trick of not overworking 
themselves ; and so far as wonderful individual distance 



86 UNRELIABLE EVIDENCE 

rides are concerned, I have been unable to pin down a 
single such ride to reliable evidence. An Arab sheik out 
in the desert, who owns a high-bred mare, will tell you of 
marvellous performances, but they are as nebulous as his 
own Thousand and One Nights. I once sought to pur- 
chase some speed — a drive of eighty miles over the excel- 
lent turnpike from Soussa to Tunis — in order to catch a 
steamer ; but though the owner of some really fine Ara- 
bians had been telling about the three hundred kilometres 
(one hundred and eighty-six miles) a day they could do, 
no amount of money could induce him to agree to take 
me over the course of eighty miles with four horses and 
a light vehicle in less than twenty hours. 

It used to be asserted that the Turcoman cavalry could 
ride in large bodies one hundred miles a day for a week, 
or even more ; but, though all the steppes horses of the 
world, like our broncos, are incomparable stayers on their 
own terrain, this distance must be cut down by a large 
percentage. My ancient school -friend, now a pacha, 
major-general, and chief of the forty thousand odd Kurd- 
ish cavalry of the Turkish Empire, though absolutely 
familiar with the subject, was unwilling to vouch for 
such a statement. The Kurdish is practically the same 
as the Turcoman horse. In talking it over, this gentle- 
man cited one of his own distance rides, fifteen hundred 
kilometres in forty -five days, as a great performance, 
which he thought established the reputation of the horse 
of Asia Minor beyond cavil. But this is only thirty-three 
miles a day. It was unnecessary to argue the matter, as 
it would not have elicited more accurate statistics. 

After all said, the palm for distance riding must be 
awarded to our own cavalry officers. Taking all the con- 
ditions into account, there are probably no civilized horse- 
men who can ride so far with a body of men and bring 



THE AMERICAN MAMMAL 87 

them to the end of their journey in as clean a condition 
as the best of our officers on the plains. The talent to do 
this is by no means universal ; but it is wide-spread. And 
though we may marvel at the recent three hundred and 
fifty miles ridden in from seventy-two to eighty hours by 
the most expert foreign horsemen on their picked horses, 
the record of dead and foundered steeds leads us to be- 
lieve that we could have done as well and saved our 
horses. 

This brings us again to the question of the endurance 
of the American mammal. Except the ass, there is per- 
haps no creature of the equine race as stubbornly endur- 
ing as the bronco. This is largely due to the American 
climate. The record of running and trotting time in 
America tends to prove the same thing ; and our athletic 
records, considering how recently born our athletic fad is, 
are of hio-h grade. The fact that the common States' 
horse can be taken and, after short training, made to do 
such marvels of distance work, not only proves the intelli- 
gence of our officers but sustains the claim of superior 
vitality in the horse. 



XVIII 

And now, my hard -riding cross-country brothers, ye 
who win glory in the polo-field ; ye who deem that twen- 
ty-five or thirty miles in fine weather, over the best of 
roads, without other weight than your own avoirdupois 
and a light saddle, is a good day's work for man and 
beast ; ye who (I know you don't mean it, or do it with- 
out reflection) are wont to scoff at the West Point rider, 
or listen to the persuasive ranchman as he runs down the 
work of the Army because it does not always chime in 
with his own peculiar interests ; ye who flatter yourselves 
that you and your ilk are peerless horsemen, and who run 
no risk beyond an occasional spill — will you not agree 
with me that the above Army rides are hard jewels to 
match? If you and I, on our thousand-dollar imported 
mounts — not to quote fancy prices — should cover even 
seventy miles in thirty-one hours (we should prefer to do 
it in two instalments, you know, chappie!), should we not 
have a good week's glory at the club, and be the cynosure 
of neighboring eyes ? But do you think we should care, 
with Captain Wood, to double up that distance, sit thirty- 
one consecutive hours in the saddle, and do one hundred 
and forty miles for the sake of — thirteen dollars a month 
and duty? Not but what, in my youth and prime, I 
might have done ; not but what to-day you might, under 
parallel circumstances, do that very thing ! Good Amer- 
ican grit is the same at all times and in all places. I am 
not discounting your ability to perform ; and that your 



DON'T RUN DOWN THE ARMY! 89 

generous horseman's heart — for no man who loves a horse 
e'er lacks the touch of nature — must warm towards the 
blue -coats who can accomplish such feats it needs no 
words to tell. It takes gimp, brother, it takes intelli- 
gence, it takes that sympathetic knowledge of the horse 
which we all admire. Let me ask you to study these little 
items — you can find no end of others if you will take the 
trouble to hunt them up — and when you feel inclined to 
criticise the Army because it does not accomplish the im- 
possible, just stop and think. Men who can ride such dis- 
tances as these are apt to do all that flesh and blood can 
stand. Ta-ta ! 



XIX 

In constant association with the cavalryman comes 
that most faithful servant — the only good Indian except 
a dead one — the Indian scout. There are numbers of 
these men enlisted in the Army, and many more when oc- 
casion demands have been temporarily in service. These 
men are not to be confounded with the Indians who have 
recently been recruited, with questionable results, in the 
rank and file. The scouts are men of exceptional reli- 
ability and intelligence, and as a rule have proved to be 
valuable in a high degree. Some have rendered unusual 
service. The Indian scout receives the pay and allowance 
of the cavalry soldier. He may have come of any tribe. 
He finds his own ponies, but has issued to him a Govern- 
ment saddle and equipments, and barring spurs, for which 
he substitutes the invariable quirt, delights in Uncle Sam's 
uniform, as, more's the pity, every soldier does not. Why 
is the profession which, honorably filled, is the noblest of 
all professions, if courage, endurance, and all the most 
manly qualities in their highest expression can ennoble a 
profession, looked on askance by all Americans ? It is a 
fact of which we should be heartily ashamed, that the 
United States uniform, which has covered the breasts of 
so many heroes, from George Washington to Ulysses S. 
Grant, is to-day a badge of ostracism. It is this, more 
than any other one fact, which lies at the root of the nu- 
merous desertions from the Army. 

Since the aborigines have been kept on the reserva- 



DRUBBING HIS RIBS 93 

tions, the Indian scout has ridden an imitation of the cav- 
alry seat, and has broken himself of kicking his pony's 
ribs at every stride. The Indian is vain and imitative, 
and these two qualities make him a servant of the repub- 
lic equally tractable and reliable. We are indebted to him 
for much of the best service, and in his ranks have been 
numbered many men whose names are household words. 

This habit of drubbing the horse's ribs is one by no 
means confined to the Indian, though he indulges in it to 
excess. You see it in Central Park, in Rotten Row, in all 
the cavalry of Europe, among the Arabs, on the steppes 
of Russia. Its special use among all these appears to be 
to keep the horse at a rapid walk ; when a horse is on a 
faster gait, it is chiefly the Indian who keeps up the pound- 
ing. It is of no particular value ; for, like the use of the 
whip, familiarity soon breeds contempt, and the horse per- 
forms no better for the punishment and less willingly for 
the worry. It is an ungainly trick, too, much on a par 
with swinging the legs at a trot. In a soldier particularly 
one wishes to see that sort of precision which should be a 
sequence of a perfect setting-up ; and the trick of using 
the heels at every moment sadly mars the military seat. 
There are other ways of keeping a horse at his best which 
are not so objectionable as this. 



XX 

We have travelled so near the border that we cannot 
well afford not to pay a visit to our neighbors. All ex- 
cept jealously conservative Canadians will acknowledge 
that there are many things which the Dominion might 
learn to advantage from the States ; and there are incon- 
testable others in which the Dominion might give us 
points. Among these, what we have been discussing sug- 
gests its management of the Indian, which has always 
been in marked contrast to our own. Among other in- 
struments of our neighbor's Indian Department is a bri- 
gade of cavalry known as the Canadian Mounted Police. 
This is an uncommonly fine body of men, numbering on 
its roster many of the better classes. They have the usual 
military organization, but are distributed in small troops 
all over Canada. Their duties are chiefly to suppress the 
whiskey trade — for fire-water has always been and is still 
the greatest of the red man's foes — keep the Indians in sub- 
jection, and aid the sheriffs of the various counties. These 
men ride a bred -up bronco. Their saddle is what is 
known as the Montana tree, and for this style of saddle 
they ride with rather too short a stirrup to suit our notions 
— a seat akin to the English military seat. On a trot they 
pound, as with such short stirrups they cannot well avoid 
doing. The seat of the United States soldier is apparently 
contrasted to theirs, and each method not only has its ad- 
vocates, but produces in many individuals the best of 
horsemanship. The seat of this rider gives him a pur- 




CANADIAN MOUNTED POLICE 



HANDS AND HEELS 97 

chase with the thigh, the inside of the knee, and when he 
closes his legs, as he must in the ranks, with the upper 
part of the calf. It is in accordance with the old saw of 
" 'ands and 'eels low, 'ead and 'eart 'igh," under which so 
many splendid horsemen have grown up — except that his 
bridle hand is raised by the blanket roll or carbine. He 
seems to be sitting, as he faces us, in just the style he ought 
not to sit. No one but a Mexican or the ghost of a knight 
in armor rides in this form. It is not unnatural for a man 
to thrust out his feet as a change of position, but it is the 
very worst seat in which a man can indulge if he retains 
it habitually. 

The world seems to be sliding into other notions than 
it used to have. The 'ands and 'eels low applies to the 
hands only. The English cross-country rider of to-day 
has his foot no more than level when at rest, and keeps 
his toe well down when in motion. This has partly come 
about from the trick of holding the stirrup in place when 
leaping, and partly from the fact that the Briton, even 
after hounds, does not ride with leathers as short as years 
ago. We used to hear, particularly during our war, many 
an Old Country man ridicule the American cavalry seat, 
because our men hang their toes when in the saddle, 
rather than depress their heels, as her Majesty's troopers 
and school -riders are supposed to do. In some respects 
this is not strange, for many an Englishman will, as a 
matter of habit or of keeping his hand in, criticise every- 
thing lie runs across, whether he knows anything about it 
or not. It is merely a trick, a sort of weak offshoot of the 
excellent character which gives him his energy and cour- 
age and stick-to-ativeness. And the veriest little London 
cockney, who has never thrown his leg across anything 
but a broken-down ninepence-an-hour 'Ampstead 'Eath 
'ack, will undertake to criticise the riding of the cowboy 



98 REPUBLICS 

or the Southerner. But the variation between the seats 
of the two soldiers in question is not great ; they are, in 
actual fact, nearly alike. Make a composite photograph 
of fixe hundred American and another of five hundred 
British troopers, and it will be found that the three lines 
which establish the seat — the back-bone, the thigh-bone, 
and the shank-bone — will lie with small variation upon 
each other, while the position on the back of the horse 
will in neither case be far from the correct one. The 
low-carried toe merely gives the appearance of a straighter 
leg ; there is practically the same seat. One advantage of 
"heels down" is that it lends a bit more griping power 
to the upper muscle of the calf ; but to gain the ankle-play 
which is essential to comfortable riding with long stirrups, 
the foot should be level, so as to yield as much up as down 
motion. Neither extreme is beneficial. Though I have 
always been an advocate of the old-fashioned seat, ac- 
quaintance with many wonderful riders with toes pendent 
has taught me that this style has its advantages. It ap- 
proaches nearer the bareback seat than any other, and by 
far the greater number of civilized equestrians ride with 
toe rather than heel depressed. 

The Canadian Mounted Police is one of the most effi- 
cient organizations which exist, and it accomplishes its 
purpose because it is not interfered with. Its work tells 
and is appreciated, as the much harder and more danger- 
ous duties of our cavalry are not. There are some benefits 
which accrue to the individual from a centralized govern- 
ment which our own does not so well afford. That a 
true republic, well governed, is the best of governments 
can scarcely be denied ; but in an illy or laxly governed 
republic abuses and hardships spring up as by magic and 
thrive apace. By republic I do not mean the soi-disant 
republics of the world. I know of but three real repub- 



POLITICS TABOO 99 

lies — Switzerland, Great Britain, and America. But this 
is politics ; and, according to the Loyal Legion rule, who- 
ever refers to politics at a meeting of the Commanderv 
is for the first offence fined thirty dollars, and for the sec- 
ond is dismissed the Order. Let us consider this a meet- 
ing, and enforce the rule. 



XXI 

The cowboy is in the saddle more than any man on 
the plains. He rides what is well known as the cowboy's 
saddle, or Brazos tree. It is adapted from the old Span- 
ish saddle— is, in fact, almost similar — and differs sensibly 
from the Mexican. The line of its seat from cantle to 
horn, viewed sidewise, is a semicircle; there is no flat 
place to sit on. This shape gives the cowboy, seen from 
the side, all bnt as perpendicular a seat in the saddle as 
the old knight in armor. There are, of course, other sad- 
dles in use. The Texas saddle has a much flatter seat 
than the Brazos tree ; the Cheyenne saddle a still flatter 
one, with a high cantle and a different cut of pommel- 
arch and bearing, and some individuals may ride any pe- 
culiar saddle ; but all must have the horn and high cantle. 
In no other tree would the cowboy be at home or fit for 
service. Not only this, but in a flat English saddle the 
cowboy cuts a sorry figure. One of the best-known men 
in America, the owner of a big Western ranch — where, of 
course, he rides d la cowboy, and when East noted as a 
bold and skilful rider in the Meadow Brook Hunt, where 
of course, too, he rides a flat saddle — told me that once his 
ranch superintendent, a well-known bronco -buster, when 
East, was compelled to ride an English saddle, and that 
the man was fairly slipping off sidewise every minute or 
two. He simply could not ride the thing at all, nor for a 
long time get the hang of it. 

The cowboy is careful of his ponies, not only from a 



NAVAJO BLANKETS 101 

horseman's motives, but because he is held to account for 
them. Unlike the Indian, he rarely has a sore-backed nag. 
He often uses a gunny-bag saddle-cloth next the pony's 
skin, the hempen fibre of which keeps the back cool, and 
over this, for padding, his woollen blanket. In the South- 
west he is apt to sport a variegated saddle-cloth with 
fringed edge, such as the Mexicans parade ; and if he can 
manage to get hold of a Navajo blanket he is fixed. 
These wonderful bits of handwork, of bright, agreeable 
colors, are worth from fifty dollars upwards, never seem 
to wear out, are cool and pleasant to the pony's skin, do 
not gall, and are by long odds the best thing under a sad- 
dle which exists. The Indian will give from two ponies 
upwards for one of them, when he can buy a wife for one 
pony, and not a very good pony (or wife) at that. The 
cowboy's saddle is held in place by one very wide or two 
narrower hair cinchas, though the single cincha is more 
a Californian than a plains habit ; if one, it is, among 
plains riders, always put a full hand-breadth back of what 
in the East we call the girth-place. The rear girth gets a 
purchase on the back slope of the ribs. 

The cowboy's bit is any kind of a curb with a long gag. 
He rides under all conditions with a loose rein, the bit 
ends of which are often made of chain, to prevent the 
pony from chewing it off, and this clanks a rhythmic 
jingle to his easy lope. His pony is as surefooted as a 
mountain goat, and will safely scramble with his big load 
up a cliff, or slide down a bank which would make our 
tenderfoot hair stand on end. The loose rein and the 
sharp gag enable the cowboy with the least jerk to pull 
his pony back on his haunches, for the pony is unused to 
a steady hold. The cowboy is assuredly no three-legged 
rider. The bit hangs in a fancy trade -bridle, which the 
cowboy ornaments in various fashions to suit his own 



102 FEEL OF THE MOUTH 

ideas of style. The effect of its use on the pony is pre- 
cisely the reverse of that which is made by a bit on a 
horse suppled by school methods or even bitted, and 
which has been ridden on a light touch. The latter 
brings down his head to the hand, with an arched neck, 
easy mouth, and a give-and-take feel of the hand. The 
pony, at the least intimation of the bit, long before the 
rein is taut, jerks up his head, and must have a tough 
mouth, or an exceptional fright, to make him take hold 
of you. 

This habit of using a severe bit and of never allowing 
the horse to take hold of it is partaken by the majority 
of the riders of the world. All Orientals, without excep- 
tion, bit a horse in this fashion. I have at intervals seen 
a man in the Orient with an easy bit, playing it with a 
light touch — by touch I mean an actual feel of the 
horse's mouth — and with a neat and easy hand ; but it is 
very rare. A loose rein gives no useful touch. You can 
start your horse with the spur or whip, or with a word ; 
you can stop him with the merest touch of the rein ; you 
can guide him by the rein on his neck. But I deem it 
impossible to communicate with a horse as intimately 
with this loose rein as you can with the touch of a bit 
and bricloon, well adjusted, and which you always hold so 
as to have the least possible delicate feel of the horse's 
mouth. Such a touch not only yields a sense of compan- 
ionship between man and beast, but the horse unquestion- 
ably likes the pleasant conversation which thus goes on. 
A man may talk with his horse in words, and of these an 
intelligent horse is very fond; but they will at least be 
rare. If he is in the habit of talking to him through the 
rein and bit, his hands will be always talking — and it is 
this that pleases and controls the true saddle - beast. I 
will discuss this point again when I come to speak of 




,. ..,..,. 







COWBOY LIGHTING THE RANGE FIRE 



THE COWBOY'S RIG 105 

school methods. Even though the discussion may be 
quite one-sided, I fancy we shall not disagree. 

The most striking part of the cowboy's rig are the cha- 
parajos, or huge leather overalls, he is apt to wear. These 
originated in the mesquite or chaparral country, where 
the cattle business had its origin, and where jeans or a 
pair of the best cords will be torn to shreds in a day. 
When the chaparajos are seen out of this region, they 
have been retained from force of habit. This singular 
garment is made of cowhide, weighs five or six pounds, 
and used invariably to have the edge cut into a long 
fringe ; but this ornamentation has begun to disappear. 
It boasts no seat, which could with difficulty be made to 
fit. On the left leg of the chaparajos is a pocket for cig- 
arettes or chewing-tobacco, matches, and small sundries. 
The chaparajos could not comfortably be worn in any 
other saddle than one which gave a short, upright, " forked- 
radish " seat. They are too much like trousers made of 
stove-pipe. 

At the cowboy's saddle-bow usually hangs a rawhide 
or hair or Mexican grass rope, from forty feet long up- 
wards, to use for every purpose, from roping cattle to haul- 
ing out a mired team ; and his rifle, a 73-Winchester, rests 
crosswise at the horn, in a broad pouch-like strap, which 
protects the lock from injury ; or is slung under the left 
leg, where it can lie with equal security. He boasts few 
riches. What he has is apt to be in dollars, or owed him 
by the ranchman, or occasionally in a few steers. He buys 
a pair of eighteen - dollar boots, a pair of fifteen - dollar 
gloves, and the rest of his rig and dress is scarcely worth 
a five-dollar bill. This is by no means from extravagance. 
He must keep his feet well shod and his legs protected. 
Without the very best gloves he would shortly have no 
skin left on his hands. It is self - protection and well- 



106 MOUNTING A BRONCO 

studied economy that makes him spend so much on these 
two articles of attire. And so long as they are orna- 
mental as well as useful, he is as well satisfied with them 
as a New York swell used to be with a cover-coat with 
long swallow-tails sticking out from under it. 

Broncos with manners are fewer and farther between 
than even angels' visits. The cowboy's bronco is never 
what we should call half -broken. By the time he has 
been ridden enough to be well broken in he is usually all 
broken up. He is a difficult fellow to mount, being rid- 
den but once every four or ^.ve days. If he were not so 
small one could never mount him without assistance. He 
will back away, plunge forward, swerve, kick, strike, 
squeal, rush full at you with mouth wide open, or per- 
form a hundred other antics, any one of which would 
compel us simple-minded park riders to hurry him off to 
the nearest auction -room — or advertise him at private 
sale as a horse of exceptional courage and unflagging 
spirit. He is, in every sense, what we are wont to char- 
acterize as a dangerous brute. But the cowboy can al- 
ways see him and go him one better. Familiarity breeds 
contempt. For what he calls violence he ropes the 
bronco and chokes the violence out of him with the wind ; 
to what we call violence he pays no manner of heed. 
He approaches him at the left shoulder, with a wary eye 
to what the pony may be up to, and gathers the rein in 
his left hand. Not infrequently he puts his hand over 
the pony's eye while he grabs the left stirrup and gets his 
foot in it, following up the bronco's antics as best he may 
— man and horse not unlikely executing a most exhilarat- 
ing pas de deux. Then, grabbing the pommel with the 
right hand and the pony's withers with the left, and if 
possible getting his left elbow in the hollow of the neck 
just forward of the withers, nothing which the pony can 



RISING TO A TROT 107 

do can keep him out of the saddle. In fact, a plunge 
which drags him from his feet will all the more certainly 
swing him to his seat. Then, after a series of bucks more 
or less severe, according as to how much the pony has 
been " busted," during which exercise the cowboy's spurs 
go time and again into the pony's flanks, and the pony 
acts like the veriest wild beast, the mastery is established 
where it properly belongs, the pony steadies down after 
a fashion, and harmony, such as it is, reigns till the next 
time of mounting. 

The cowboy universally rides a lope, as do all people 
who use wild horses. The bronco has no other gait, in 
fact, unless a sort of fox-trot. The cowboy's seat is un- 
suited to an open trot. He won't ride it if he can help 
it, and it may as well be confessed, he cannot — and no 
one can — sit close without pounding to the long rangy 
trot of a big thorough-bred, though it is the perfection of 
gaits if you rise to it. There is a good deal of nonsense 
talked about rising to a trot — almost as much as there is 
about drinking iced - water. The fact is that all peoples, 
wild and semi-civilized, who are used to horses, rise to a 
trot. They don't do it often because they prefer and 
train their horses to other and better gaits ; but if their 
mount falls into a trot, or they happen to ride a trotting 
horse, they naturally rise, as a matter of course. It is 
only those who stick exclusively to the old ramrod pat- 
tern who do not do so. 

I seem to have roped iced-water into the question, but 
I will use it only to quote a clever friend of mine, a doc- 
tor of no mean repute. Said he to me one day : " Why 
do you all declaim against iced-water ? Of course it can 
be abused by drinking in a heated condition — so can any 
other food or drink be abused. But all animals drink 
iced-water a good part of the year. When you water a 



108 COWBOY ACROSS COUNTRY 

farm -horse or your cows at the brook in January, what 
else are they drinking ? And yet, does it hurt them ? 
No," suiting the action to the word, "iced- water is a health- 
ful drink, properly used." 

We hear from many that the cowboy can do every- 
thing. Kumors run that some of Buffalo Bill's cowboys 
rode English horses in their own saddles and beat every- 
thing to hounds somewhere in the Midland counties — 
we won't be specific and say the Bel voir. Those who 
know the country this implies and its riders accept this 
statement cum grano. But assume its truth. One often 
sees a dare-devil of an English lad just out of college 
who imagines, because he has once or twice led the field 
on one of the squire's crack hunters, that he is the best 
rider in it. But, in truth, he is risking his horse's, not to 
count his own less valuable neck, at ever}^ obstacle he 
clears, and pumping the last ounce out of his generous 
beast, while wiser and older riders close behind him are 
saving their horses and bringing them in fresh and able. 
It is not riding a fabulous distance, or at the greatest 
speed, or with the most conspicuous daring, which is the 
test, but getting in at the death with the least exertion to 
man and beast. The highest proof of artistic horseman- 
ship is to accomplish your task with the least expenditure 
of physical force. To keep the horse in good condition is, 
among civilized people, a greater test than the speed or 
daring of the rider. Witness the Berlin-Vienna ride. So 
in the great tests of distance made by plains ponies and 
civilized horses one element is apt to be forgotten. The 
latter must be brought in without injury ; the pony may 
be killed by the feat. No question whatever that if the 
pony and the thorough - bred, under even conditions, be 
ridden until both fall in their tracks, the pony will be 
beaten in speed and distance. It seems to me clear that 



ENGLISHMEN ON THE PLAINS 109 

thorough-bred s have always beaten ponies ; but that the 
pony will recover from what may kill the thorough-bred 
is equally clear. In the Berlin - Vienna ride no doubt 
fewer of the ponies died ; but those thorough- breds which 
died a day or two after could probably have gone much 
farther and left the ponies still farther behind, before 
they dropped. The grit of the thorough-bred is a wonder- 
ful element. So long as you keep him moving he will 
resist death in a manner utterly inexplicable ; when, if you 
stop him, he may die in a few hours. 

But the cowboy is unequalled in his own province, and 
this is enough of fame. His seat is astonishing. It is a 
common feat for him to put a playing-card on the saddle, 
or a dollar piece under each foot in the stirrup, or under 
his knees, and ride a vigorous bucker. Still he cannot 
ride a flat saddle until he learns the trick of it. And 
while no cowboy, without serving his apprenticeship in 
the hunting-field, would hold his own with practised rid- 
ers there, it is certain that he would much sooner learn 
to ride across country well than even the best of cross- 
country men could vie with him in controlling a vicious 
bronco, or indeed, in riding over the rough country he is 
wont to cover. It is the universal experience of the 
plains that the best English rider fights shy of ground 
which the cowboy will gallop over, until he catches on to 
it and confides in the sure feet of his little mount. Some 
men never learn to ride ; but it stands to reason, caeteris 
paribus, that the man who makes riding his business will 
be a stouter horseman than one to whom it is a mere 
diversion. 



XXII 

As a rough-rider the cowboy is facile princeps ; as a 
horse-breaker he devotes too little time to his task, nor 
does he go to work in the way best calculated to produce 
a quiet nag. Bronco-busting is a distinct art. The bron- 
co-buster may be a " prof essional," who has originally 
taken up the work to replenish his exchequer, depleted 
by whiskey or poker, and sticks to it for lack of an easier 
job, and because he is at low- water-mark; or he may be a 
cow-puncher in slack times. As a rule he cannot stick it 
out very long, for the business is sure to end by busting 
the buster. It is unquestionably the most violent form 
of athletics, and the bronco - buster, though he must be 
strong and active, is not, as a rule, in the exceptional con- 
dition necessary for great feats of strength and endur- 
ance. Indeed, training would scarcely help him much. 
Whatever his strength and health, the bronco - buster is 
sure to get hurt sooner or later. He works it off and on 
at ten dollars a bronco. All cowboys do more or less 
breaking, and some ranches always break their own ponies, 
and generally have better ones for so doing, because they 
give each pony more time. 

The typical bronco-buster should weigh a hundred and 
seventy or a hundred and eighty pounds. Weight does 
the business when a light man can accomplish noth- 
ing, though one of the most successful bronco -riders of 
whom I ever heard was a long -geared, lank Texas lad, 
who would stick to his horse till his head would snap 



"BUSTING" 111 

like a whip with the bucking, and he himself lose con- 
sciousness. Indeed, it is not uncommon for violent pitch- 
ing to produce hemorrhage of the lungs, while hernia, 
cracked bones, and serious sprains are frequent disasters. 
There is no creature in the service of man which can 
put its master to such violent efforts in its subjugation as 
the bronco. Of course a better plan would be the more 
gradual one of civilized trainers, but for this there is no 
leisure. 

The whole secret of "busting" (the word is advisedly 
used, as picturesquely expressive of the process, in contra- 
diction to breaking) lies in completely exhausting the 
bronco at the first lesson ; he will never buck "for keeps" 
more than once. Buffalo Bill's ponies have been allowed 
to throw their riders, or the rider has judiciously slipped 
off at the right intervals, thus impressing the idea on the 
bronco's intelligence that he can surely throw his man if 
he sticks long enough to his bucking. But once ridden 
to the verge of falling in his tracks, the pony will not do 
his level worst again, but content himself with grunting 
and yelling, " knocking his teeth out " and playing the 
devil generally. The buster must be careful to keep well 
away from sheds and timber, and have room enough to 
cut a wide swath. He must be able to stick to his saddle 
like a leech, with or without stirrups. If, indeed, he needs 
his stirrups for a hold, he is not looked on as much of a 
rider ; and it is a matter of pride with the " sure enough " 
buster not to rely on anything but what old horsemen, call 
glue. To show his contempt for the bronco's power, he 
will ply the quirt at every jump. It is a fair fight and 
no favor between man and beast. But the buster has 
been there before, and knows exactly what he is about ; 
the bronco is new to the business, and though he in- 
variably makes a good fight, he is sure to have to give 



112 PRELIMINARIES 

in. Some ponies take more busting than others, and 
some always buck more or less, however well broken. 
In fact, when the punchers turn out of a cold morning, 
the ponies will pitch through the entire outfit, and the 
crowd stands around to see each man mount, watch 
the fun, and chaff the rider. If a pony chances to win 
a heat and his rider comes a cropper, it is what genial 
John Leech calls a "little 'olliday" to the rest of the 
boys. 

Two rides will usually bust a bronco so that the aver- 
age cow-puncher can use him, but he would scarcely keep 
company long with most Central Park riders. Two men 
generally work together. They enter the corral, where 
there is apt to be a good bunch of ponies ; and these, as 
if guessing what is to come, at once jump away, and go 
careering madly around the enclosure. One man handles 
the rope, which he trails along the ground until he selects 
his pony, and then, with a sudden and dexterous snap, 
drags it over his head. A good roper can cast twenty-five 
feet. Then both men seize hold, dig their heels into the 
ground to stop the pony — knack will enable even one 
man to jerk him up, if need be — and finally get a turn 
round the snubbing - post in the centre of the corral. 
There they have the pony fast, and they gradually work 
him up to it. The pony does not submit to this vigorous 
coaxing in any amiable mood. He bucks and plunges, 
kicks and squeals, and charges straight at his tormentors, 
who have to play a regular game of hide-and-seek behind 
the snubbing-post to save themselves from broken bones. 
But even a bronco with his lungs, pumped dry will suc- 
cumb, and finally the men get the winded pony snubbed 
up close to the post, where one can hold him while the 
other gets behind him and catches another rope on one 
fore -foot. Then, as the pony starts, he yanks the foot 



THE FIGHT 115 

back, and in nine cases out of ten down goes the pony ; 
but not always. Some obstinate ones will sink on the 
other knee, and with the nose on the ground still have 
four points to stand on. But by-and-by down he must ; 
the snubbing-rope is made fast, the saddle is fitted on tant 
Men que mal, the cincha worked under, and the whole 
made fast. Sometimes it is difficult to get a bit in the 
pony's mouth, and they put on a hackamore, which is a 
halter-like rope arrangement, a sort of Rarey hitch, with 
an extra twist around his jaw, instead. Then the second 
rope is loosed and the pony is let up, still held by the 
snubbing -post rope. This is gradually loosened so as to 
let the pony have a little fun all to himself, which he is 
sure to do, pitching round in a pretty lively fashion for 
twenty minutes or half an hour to rid himself of the sad- 
dle, despite the choking of the rope. This takes the feather 
edge off him, and he will end up his pkiy covered with 
foam and quite a bit tired. Some extra vigorous busters 
ride the pony right off, but the more judicious prefer 
to let him tire himself out first. When this is done the 
pony is gradually worked out on the prairie between 
two ropes, and may perhaps have to be thrown again 
to cinch him up and get read}^ for the ride. To keep 
him down while the rider gets ready, the other man 
sits on his head, and the rider puts aside his six-shooter 
and hat and coat and everything superfluous, but keeps 
his spurs and quirt. Then he seizes the saddle and 
gets his left foot in the stirrup, the pony is gradually 
unwound, and the instant he reaches his feet the buster 
is in the saddle. It is incredible how active these men 
can be. 

Now the real fun begins, and the rider and pony go at 
it in earnest. The other man sometimes goes along on 
another horse, with a rope to catch the ponj r if things 



116 THE SURRENDER 

work wrong ; but he is a wall-flower, and takes no part in 
the dancing. It is pretty rough sport. The pony may be 
a running bucker, or may stand stock-still and pitch in 
place at unexpected intervals ; he may buck over a bank ; 
he may pitch a somerset forward ; he may rear and fall 
over backward. The rider wants both to stick to his pony 
and be ready to vault off in short measure if essential. He 
uses all the legs nature has given him, stirrup or no stir- 
rup, and lashes his pony at every rise with all his might. 
The suaviter in modo is absolutely sunk in the fortiter in 
re. When the pony rises the trick is to get away from the 
cantle, and the heavy buster has a fashion when the pony 
comes down of settling himself in his seat with a hard jolt 
and a sort of an " Ugh !" — a thing that helps fag out the 
little fellow, which weighs barely four times as much as 
the man, was tired before he began, and is now working 
a dozen times as hard. One way or other the pony will 
keep his resistance up for a certain length of time, accord- 
ing to disposition ; but in a couple of hours he will be 
ridden down. Unless he gets his rider into a snarl, and 
thus earns a let - up, he will be so played out that he 
will go along pretty quietly, with but slight attacks of 
his bucking fever. He has found his master, and he 
knows it. 

One more ride will be the final polish of his primary- 
schooling. The kindergartening- has been omitted. The 
second ride will be a repetition of the first in a slightly 
modified and less dangerous form. After this the pony is 
considered " busted ;" but his grammar-schooling he gets 
from the cowboy's use. He never reaches the high or 
normal school, let alone the college ; but he has a true 
Yankee knack of educating himself, and the amount of 
information and skill he will pick up of his own accord at 
cow-punching is wonderful. He is, of course, taught to 



1 



FINAL EDUCATION 11 



guide by the neck, and he twists and turns in the perform- 
ance of his duties with extraordinary intelligence and 
quickness ; but a good deal of what he does is not so much 
taught by an educational process as picked up by repeti- 
tion of the same work, which, after all, is the only way a , 
horse ever learns. I 






XXIII 

I have above referred to " Buffalo Bill." There lias 
probably been no American in Europe since General 
Grant who has become so universally known. Not to 
know " B. B." argues yourself unknown. You see him 
mentioned in print, or hear him spoken of on every street 
corner as "Boofalo" or " Beel" in every part of the earth 
where men and women like amusement. He has familiar- 
ized the Old World with America ; or, I should say, has 
given the Old World a certain conception of America 
which is ineffaceable. Whether it is to our advantage to 
have the universe believe that our common sports are rid- 
ing pitching ponies, or shooting glass balls from the sad- 
dle, and that an American Vestibule Limited is, after all, 
really nothing but a Concord stage-coach, liable to be at- 
tacked by savages, is perhaps questionable. We all know 
Colonel Cody, admire his manly qualities, and feel happy 
at his financial success — thoroughly well-earned by a cap- 
ital "sho," than which Phineas T. himself never origi- 
nated a better. But it gives people a queer idea of us some- 
times, and lends color to the plausibility of the statement 
I recently saw in Galignani's Messenger anent one of our 
well-known publishers, that " he had been very carefully 
brought up, and had even had the benefit of an university 
education." And once I earned the suspicion if not the 
positive dislike of a very charming woman, d laqioelle je 
contais fleurette, as we were riding through the Gap of 
Dunloe by mildly denying her positive assertion that 



THE TIRELESS COWBOY 119 

Colonel Cody was a regimental commander of our regu- 
lar army. In fact, she became convinced, to my keen 
chagrin, that I myself was no army officer, for, said she, 
ki I know a gentleman who has seen his commission." 
"Buffalo Bill" represents one phase of our civilization 
most admirably ; but we have, in the eyes of the semi-in- 
telligent abroad, fallen as a nation to the estate of Indian 
fighters and bronco-busters, partly owing to the education 
given the average circus -public by the otherwise irre- 
proachable Wild West. For all that, hail to " B. B.," and 
here's a bumper to his future ! 

The cowboy will stay in the saddle an almost unheard- 
of period, often forty-eight hours at a time, when holding 
big bunches of cattle. He is up by daylight, and works 
till dark, and then well on into the night, or all night long 
by turns. He is faithful and untiring, and wedded to his 
master's interests. Much of the vice attributed to the 
cowboy must be laid to the score of the " bad man " of 
the plains, a class which used to exist in great numbers, 
but has been for the most part hunted clown and run out 
by the ranchmen, who were the greatest sufferers. 

This term " bad man" always strikes me as an odd coin- 
age for a set of fellows no more noted for abstemiousness 
in language than mule-drivers. Its very moderation, how- 
ever, lends it force, though at first blush it sounds like 
what the children call goody-goody. And out on the 
plains there is far less overwrought language than in the 
slums of cities. The language is picturesquely forcible, 
but rarely flavored with Billingsgate. The cowboy is no 
saint, but he is a manly fellow, and averages quite as well 
as the farmer or mechanic; the stranger who has been 
cast on his hospitality, and has accepted it as frankly as 
it was tendered, would say much higher. 

The cowboy rides with the easy balance bred of con- 



120 THE COWBOY'S PICTURESQUENESS 

stant habit, swaying about in the saddle much like a 
drunken man, but with a graceful method in his reeling. 
He does not, however, ride all over his horse like the Ind- 
ian on his pad or bareback. When he ropes a steer or a 
pony, he gets well over on the nigh side, and throws his 
weight against the strain, resting the back of the right 
thigh in the saddle. He can perform all the tricks of the 
Indian, and much of his fun as well as his work is astride 
his ponies. On foot he reminds one of Jack ashore, part- 
\y from the stiffness of his chaparajos, partly from his 
own stiffness bred of the saddle habit ; but with his loose 
garments, his bright kerchief, and his jingling spurs, he is 
a most attractive felloAV, in perfect keeping with his sur- 
roundings. 

The best cowboys are usually bred to the business, 
which is by no means an easy one to learn. The South- 
west yields the best supply. They are apt to claim kin- 
ship with the South rather than the East. The term 
" round-up " originated in the southern Alleghanies, " cor- 
ral " in Mexico. The cattle business is of Mexican origin, 
and the dress and method of riding are unquestionably of 
Spanish descent ; but, as in every other business, there 
are men from every section who succeed, and vastly more 
who fail. As a whole, with all his virtues and all his 
faults, he is distinctly an American product, and one, take 
him for what he is, and what he has done, to be distinctly 
proud of. 

I fear I have unintentionally given the bronco a bad 
reputation for manners. He has no worse than any wild 
horse with equal grit and strength would have ; and I 
have been referring mostly to the simon-pure, uncracked 
article. After much use and care, the pony often becomes 
very reliable. Roosevelt speaks with great affection of 
his pet hunting-pony, and many a ranchman I have known 



ODD WAY OF HITCHING 121 

has had quiet, well-behaved broncos all through the outfit. 
As a rule, the bronk is rough and ready because his master 
is so ; but gentle treatment has its effect with even him. 
Broncos become tractable to a degree scarcely known 
where the demand for steadiness exists less. It is a com- 
mon habit in some localities, when you want your pony to 
stand and wait for you, to toss the bridle-rein over his 
head and let it dangle. Many a pony by this simple de- 
vice will stand all day and scarcely move from place. It, 
or an equivalent to it, is very necessary on a plain where 
there is nothing to hitch to. Moreover, the bronco will 
face the music in hunting or on the war-path as it is diffi- 
cult to teach a civilized horse to do. 

Many busters, when they have earned a little money, 
like to take to quieter pursuits as a rest from the violence 
of their life. But the instinct comes back again, and a 
man will go to his old work on slight provocation. A 
friend of mine who keenly enjoys fun of the cowboy kind 
told me a good story of the cook of an outfit he was once 
with when on a mining tour. Jim was a quiet slouch of 
a fellow^, mighty clever over his pots and pans, and the 
boys lived in clover all winter long ; but he couldn't be 
got near a pony. He seemed to have a special aversion 
to anything on four legs unless he could cut it up for the 
kettle. Finally, in the spring, when the ponies had to be 
got to Avork again, there was a deal of talk each day about 
this or that bronk, and a lot of swearing at the hard work 
each man would have to do to get the little brutes into 
order. Jim used to join the circle sometimes after he had 
washed up, and would sit and watch the pitching, w r hile 
many a jeer was flung at him because they couldn't get 
him to take a turn. 

Finally, one day when one of the best of the outfit had 
tried all his ponies except one piebald, a notorious outlaw, 



122 AN "OUTLAW" 

which it was really a risky business to touch, but which 
looked sheepish enough when let alone, Jim was asked if 
he didn't want the job of saddling and riding him. Jim 
said he guessed not, but he thought he " would be spryer 
about doin' it if he'd got to," which piece of bravado 
elicited universal laughter, and numerous taunts to Jim 
to try. "Wa'al, boys, I don't know much about them 
bronks," said Jim, " but I've got a dollar or two laid by 
for a rainy day, and I'd like to bet I kin ride him." In a 
moment every man's pocket was empty, for they thought 
Jim didn't know what he was about. The old cook acted 
rather foolish, but said if the boys would rope and saddle 
the bronk, and would help him mount, he'd take a bet or 
two, and in five minutes he stood booked to win more dol- 
lars than he could earn at the fire in Hyq years, at odds 
which left him with a goodish margin of ready money in 
case he failed. 

Jim made a good deal of fuss getting ready and putting 
on a pair of spurs, but stood the chaff pretty well. " Made 
yer will, Jim ?" " Why not tie a pot on yer head, Jim ?" 
" Said yer prayers, Jim ?" " Where shall we plant ye, 
Jim ?" and so on, ad infinitum. Finally Jim was up, and 
the crowd backed away, for they all knew the old pie- 
bald outlaw. For an instant the bronk stood still, ears 
back, and eye full of vicious mischief. He had not been 
mounted for months. Then he arched his back and gave 
a little hoist and a lash- out with his off hind -leg. The 
boys all looked to see Jim topple ; but the quondam cook 
was transformed beyond recognition. The slouch, had all 
gone out of him ; he sat like a Centaur, heeding neither 
rein or stirrup. Nettled at Jim's strong grasp, which or- 
dinary exertions did not appear to loosen, the bronk now 
started in in earnest. He reared and plunged upward, he 
plunged forward head down, he kicked as only a Kentucky 



"BUSTER FOR THE 101!" 123 

mule or an outlaw bronk can kick, he pitched and came 
down on stiff legs with a force which would have unseated 
nine out of ten of all the boys in the outfit. Jim never 
budged from the saddle. He seemed lashed to it. The 
boys stared with eyes like saucers. " Hollo !" and a long 
" Whew !" was all you heard. The fun went on. Jim ap- 
peared to care for the piebald's pitching no more than for 
the rocking of a chair. Finally, after some minutes of the 
hottest kind of work, he seemed to wake up to it, as 
the piebald began to find he had caught a Tartar. It 
was a " game " Jim " did not understand." He chuckled 
audibly, grabbed off his hat, slapped the bronk over the 
head, kicked him between hoists, rolled all over him as he 
plunged around, laughed outright, and screamed to the 
blue-looking crowd, "Cotched a tenderfoot, boys, didn't 
yer ? Be gad, ye didn't know I'd been four years buster 
for the 101 ! Go it, ye divil," he yelled, as he slapped the 
bronk again and again with his storm-bleached hat, snap- 
ped up the reins, dug his heavy spurs into the outlaw's 
flanks, and drove the half -frightened, half -astonished brute 
hither and yon at will. " Guess I'll go bustin' agin ! Feels 
like old times! Ha'n't had so much fun for a twelve- 
month ! Hooray !" 

A sorrier crowd or a poorer you never saw, but no one 
opened his mouth to Jim. Every man paid up without a 
question. It was the event of the spring in all that sec- 
tion. 



XXIV 

The American cowboy has a Mexican cousin, the va- 
quero, who does cow-punching in Chihuahua, and raises 
horses for the Mexican cavalry and occasional shipment 
across the Eio Grande. The vaquero is generally a peon, 
and as lazy, shiftless, and unreliable a vagabond as all 
men held to involuntary servitude are wont to be. He is 
essentially a low-down fellow in his habits and instincts. 
Anything is grub to him which is not poison, and he w r ill 
thrive on offal which no human being except a starving 
savage will touch. 

In his way the vaquero is a sort of tinsel imitation of a 
Mexican gentleman, and very cheap tinsel at that. Our 
cowboy is independent, and quite sufficient unto himself. 
Everything not cowboy is tenderfoot, cumbering the 
ground, and of no use in the world's economy except as a 
consumer of beef. He has as long an array of manly qual- 
ities as any fellow living, and, despite many rough-and- 
tumble traits, compels our honest admiration. Not only 
this, but the percentage of American cowboys who are 
not pretty decent fellows is small. One cannot claim so 
much for the vaquero in question, though the term " va- 
quero " covers a great territory and class, and applies to 
the just and the unjust alike. 

Our Chihuahua vaquero wears white cotton clothes, and 
goat-skin chaparajos with the hair left on, naked feet clad 
in huarachos or sandals, and big jangling spurs. A gourd 
lashed to his cantle does the duty of canteen. He rides 







A MEXICAN VAQTTERO 



A POOR LOT 127 

the Mexican tree, and his saddle is loaded down with an 
abundance of cheap plunder. His seat is the same as the 
Mexican gentleman's — forked, with toe stuck far out to 
the front, and balancing in the saddle. He is supposed to 
be a famous rider, and is a very good one. He breaks his 
own ponies, which sufficiently proves his case. He likes 
to show off, in the true style of the Latin nations and 
their offshoots, and will often ride a half -busted bronco 
witli his feet stuck out parade fashion, much as a Yankee 
boy would carry a chip on his shoulder on the school- 
ground ; but in breaking in his pony he gripes with thigh 
and knee and calf and heels besides, as any rider perforce 
must. 

The Mexican cow -ponies are proverbially tough and 
serviceable ; but the vaquero has to turn in most of his 
good -sized ponies, and is apt to be seen on a rackabones 
of undersized or old stock, or on a mare with a foal at 
foot. His gait is the lope, with an occasional fox- trot, 
and he uses his quirt as constantly as an American Indian. 
No savage can be more cruel to his pony than a vaquero, 
or pay less heed to his welfare. Averaging the vaquero 
of Northern Mexico, one American cowboy is worth half 
a dozen of him to work ; and, though he is used to Apache 
raids, worth more than a gross of him to fight. In view 
of the origin of both these cow-punchers, this is not a sin- 
gular fact. 

And yet it is strange that the vaquero should bear so ill 
a reputation. Let us not be unjust. No doubt there are 
good vaqueros; but are they, like the good Indian, all 
with the " great majority ?" I trow not. Give a dog a 
bad name, and — Well, the vaquero has the bad name ; 
let us hope that he has not quite earned it. Even Judas 
Iscariot has had learned defenders, and an excellent tech- 
nical case can be made out for him. Shall the vaquero 



128 BROWN BEAUTIES 

lack an advocate? He comes of good stock; I have, in 
many qualities, rarely seen a finer subject -race than the 
Mexican Indian. I do not think the Spaniard on Ameri- 
can soil has thriven, in body or mind ; but the aborigines 
of Mexico have kept their fine physique, their good looks, 
and their amiable character; they have had no chance 
whatever to gain in intelligence, though they do not lack 
mother - gumption. I hardly think I have ever seen a 
greater percentage of pretty women than in Mexico, among 
the peasants. One must, to be sure, conjure away dirt 
and some rather trying habits ; but then beauty, abstract- 
ly speaking, may no doubt reside beneath a grimy exte- 
rior. I do not refer to that peculiar quality of beauty 
neatly called appetitUch by the Germans. To evoke one's 
appetite requires cleanliness rather than the thing we call 
beauty, and I do not know that I ever saw a Mexican 
Indian girl whom I would care to embrace ; but they are 
well-grown, plump, straight, have fine eyes and teeth, and 
in their unsewn garments of dirty cotton cloth, with a 
xerapa loosely thrown about head and shoulders, they are 
certainly fine specimens of womanhood, and graceful be- 
yond the corseted beauty of civilization. 

But the skin ! say you. Well, the skin is brown, but it 
shows the red blood gushing heartily beneath ; and — let 
us see — even so good a judge as the King of Dahomey 
preferred his lustrous, black-skinned, fattened beauties to 
the most exquisite of pale-face women. And let me con- 
fess to a weakness for a brown skin. I am sure that 
three out of four of my travelled, susceptible male friends 
— at least, if they will be honest about it — have grown to 
like the brown skin of the maidens of the Orient. Ought 
I to acknowledge that I, too, stand midway between the 
King of Dahomey and the European connoisseur in 
beauty ? 



DOG STORIES 129 

"I am black, but comely, 
O ye daughters of Jerusalem, 
As the tents of Kedar, 
As the curtains of Solomon," 

has a more distinct meaning to me to-day than before I 
learned to know the East. I scarcely dare confess to hav- 
ing felt a momentary disappointment in the matter of 
complexions when I once emerged from a burial of sev- 
eral weeks among Orientals, far from the contact of 
whites. That the disappointment was clue to the fact 
that I came out upon a lot of unwashed humanity, and 
that on a white skin dirt sits less gracefully than on a 
brown one, in nowise alters the captivating quality of the 
dark-hued women of the far East. 

All of which reminds me of a story. I find, as I grow 
older, that I am more and more frequently reminded of a 
story. I hold the dangerous tendency in check ; I shorten 
the curb-chain by a link ; but the tendency will now and 
then shy at some statement made in perfect innocence, 
and give a mad plunge off in the direction of a story. 
And my gripe on the rein is more lax than of old. It is 
not my fault, it is your misfortune; I am incapable of 
kicking a supposititious canine under the table in order to 
tell a good dog story, but this one must out. 

Many years ago, down in Eichmond, I was standing 
with a friend at his doorway while he gave instructions 
to an old colored servant. There chanced to pass one of 
the beauties of the city — and there were beauties in those 
days. We both took off our hats, courtesy in our atti- 
tude, admiration in our hearts. "Isn't she a beauty?" 
said I. "ImH she a beauty ?" echoed he. " Just isn't she, 
Uncle Jed ?" said my friend. " Miss Ellen's a mighty fine 
leddy," responded the old servitor, in a deferential but 
somewhat hesitating tone. "Why, what do you mean, 



130 BLACK AND WHITE 

Uncle Jed?" insisted my friend, rather nettled, and curious 
withal, at the old darky's manner. " Well, Mars' Tom," 
stuttered out the old man, "to tell de hones' truf, we 
niggers doan tink de white leddies is so hansum as de 
brack ones." This was a revelation to me, not then un- 
derstood, but now very clear. 

Our muttons, or lambs, i.e. the Mexican maidens, have 
been strayed from. Let us return cross-lots to them, and 
thence along our highway. 



XXV 

The prototype of the vaquero, the Mexican gentleman, 
is a rider of quite another quality. No city man ever ac- 
quires the second -nature seat on a horse which one can 
boast who spends all the working-hours of the day, and at 
times most of his nights, in the saddle. He may be a 
better horseman ; he may have a better style, actually or 
according to local notions or traditions ; he may be able 
to ride on the road, or do some one special thing, such as 
riding to hounds, or playing polo, or tent pegging, or tilt- 
ing, exceptionally well ; but, for all that, a chair is more 
natural to him than a saddle ; and to ask him to ride six- 
teen consecutive hours, which the cavalryman or the cow- 
boy does every day, and will double up with a smile, is to 
ask him to work to the point of complete exhaustion. 

Horsemanship is a broader term than mere riding. It 
of necessity comprises the latter to a certain extent. A 
good horseman must be a good rider, though he may not 
be a perfect one, from age or disability. But the best 
rider may be a very poor horseman. The best wild rider 
never spares his horse ; a good horsemen's first thought 
is for his beast. Still the horseman may by no means be 
able to equal the rider's feats of daring, endurance, skill, 
or agility. Whether horseman or riders, we city folks, 
compared to the saddle-bred man whose lifework is astride 
a horse, are and remain tenderfoots. 

I used myself to be something of a rider once, though 
it is not for me to say so, and age has withered my once 



132 TWEED SUITS, ET AL. 

good performance. I am something of a horseman yet, 
but old army wounds have kept me out of the saddle now 
some five years past, and threaten to end what for nearly 
four decades has been my happiest pastime. I have long 
ago yielded my place to the younger generation, to whose 
sturdy courage and fast growing skill I yield my very 
honest admiration. But though they must increase as I 
must decrease, they will not take it amiss if I descant 
upon what I once could do, and still well know, though 
performance be of the past ; and they will not feel that I 
criticise unkindly. From the mass of chatty chaff they 
may perhaps glean a few kernels of grain ; for it has not 
fallen to the lot of every horseman to study the horses of 
so many lands. Moreover, I fancy that my hand has not 
yet lost its cunning ; and that, when I find a promising 
young horse, I can still vie with many another man in 
making him a perfect saddle-beast. I should scarce dare 
compete with the rough -riding "trainer" or the bronco- 
buster ; but I feel that I might still accomplish results in 
the way of the niceties of equitation. 

The Mexican gentleman, like most Southerners, is a 
good rider within his limits. He is the very reverse of 
the Englishman, who, with his reduetio ad simplicitatem 
of everything, has stripped the beauties of equestrianism 
to the bone. With his tweed suits and his brusque man- 
ners, with his disregard of everything which lends a touch 
of charm to daily life, he has driven out much that is 
beautiful and more that is gallant in social and equestrian 
pleasures alike. With lace ruffles and buckled shoes have 
quite disappeared not only the beauties of equitation, but 
the graceful outward courtesies to the other sex ; and the 
place of the latter has not been filled by the acknowledg- 
ment conveyed in the cavalier manner now in vogue that 
women have grown in wisdom to the point of taking care 




GENTLEMAN RIDER ON THE PASEO DE LA REFORMA 



I 



OLD-FASHIONED POLISH 135 

of themselves. Women are glad, no doubt, of some eman- 
cipation, but does she whom we love and admire as the 
real woman of to-day want to be left to her own resources 
any more than did her grandmother? Has she tired of 
the willing ministration of the other sex ? We have by 
no means lost our heart courtesies, but whither has the 
old-fashioned polish taken its flight? We are indebted 
for much to the Old Country ; do not let us borrow too 
largely. Despite our ante helium accusation that the 
South affiliated Avith the British aristocracy, the Southron 
has retained his gallantry to women, as we of the Eastern 
States, to our serious detriment, have not. The best rule 
in equitation, as in other arts, is first the useful, then the 
ornamental ; but, having the useful, by no means let the 
ornamental elude you, unless the twain be incompatible. 

Our artist has drawn the typical rider on the Paseo de 
la Reforma, the Rotten Row or Harlem Lane of the City 
of Mexico. It is to be regretted that telegraph and rail- 
road are spoiling national types. Whatever country is 
invaded by news and cheap clothing loses first its na- 
tional costume and then its national characteristics. Can 
you remember how things looked forty years ago on the 
Continent of Europe? You could tell an Englishman, a 
Frenchman, a German, an American as far as you could see 
him. Not so to-day. The travelled man is cast in about 
the same mould, and unless the type' is pronounced, all na- 
tions look more or less alike. The rubbing up against one 
another of the various nations robs each of the piquancy 
it used to possess. Italy to-day is no longer the Italy you 
once posted through in your own carriage ; and Mexico 
is going the same road. In another decade there will 
scarcely be a sombrero left. But one still sees an occa- 
sional swell who clings to his national costume, and a fine 
bird he is, too, afoot or a-horseback. 



136 EQUESTRIAN AIRS 

In this style ride both the statesman and the swell, the 
banker and, when he can afford it, his clerk. And very 
much so rode the Englishman of half a century ago. I 
have of late years heard excellent Euglish horsemen brush 
aside all reference to the high -school of equitation as 
worthy only of a snob. But there were some very decent 
"snobs" in England back in the thirties, when celebrated 
members of both Houses, the leaders of fashion, the most 
noted generals — the very heroes, indeed, who had beaten 
Boney — and every one pretending to be in the social swim 
would go prancing up and down the Row, passaging, 
piaffing, traversing, to the admiration of all beholders. 
The brave men who served under Wellington and Nelson 
were not cut on the tweed- suit pattern by any means. 
Even the M. F. H. fell into the trick of it in the park. 
They were not called snobs then ; the initial letter was 
dropped ; and when a Briton slurs at the better education 
of the horse to-day, he casts a stone at his own ancestry 
over the shoulder of the lover of the high-school. I shall 
recur to this high-school business. 

The first thing in our Mexican friend which strikes us 
is his horse. This is not the bronco of the plains. He is 
evidently imported from Spain, or lately bred from im- 
ported stock without that long struggle for existence 
which has given the pony his wonderful endurance and 
robbed him of every mark of external beauty. Here we 
revert to the original Moorish type. The high and long- 
maned crest, arched with pride, the full red nostril, large 
and docile eye, rounded barrel, high croup, tail set on and 
carried to match the head, clean legs, high action, and per- 
fect poise. How he fills our artistic eye, how we dwell 
upon him ! — until we remember that performance comes 
first, beauty after, and that the English thorough-bred, 
which can give a distance to the best of this exquisite 



A CLOTHES-PIN RIDER 137 

creature's family and beat him handily, has developed 
from the same blood far other lines than these ; or, indeed, 
that the meanest runt of a plains pony, on a ride of one 
hundred miles across the Bad Lands, would leave the 
beautiful animal dead in his tracks full twoscore miles 
behind ! 

There is one point in which our steed is not Moorish — 
and it was the Moorish horse, or Barb, which came across 
with the Spaniards. This is the croup and tail. The 
Barb carries a poor tail ; it is the Arabian whose tail is so 
high-set. And in Spain, too, the tail is, as a rule, low-car- 
ried, showing its evident origin. You must cross the Lib- 
yan desert to the east before you get the best tail. And 
in Mexico one does not often see as perfect a croup as the 
saddle-beast depicted. He may have been imported from 
the Orient. 

The Mexican swell rides on a saddle w r orth a fortune. 
It is loaded with silver trimmings, and hanging over it is 
an expensive xerapa, or Spanish blanket, which adds to 
the magnificence of the whole. His queer-shaped stirrups 
are redolent of the old mines. His bridle is in like man- 
ner adorned with metal in the shape of half a dozen big 
silver plates, and to his bit is attached a pair of knotted 
red-cord reins, which he holds high up and loose. He is 
dressed in a black velvet jacket, fringed and embroidered 
with silver ; and a large and expensive sombrero, perched 
on his head, is tilted over one ear. His legs are incased 
in dark tight-fitting breeches, with silver button and chain 
trimming down the side seams, but cut so as, in summer 
weather, to unbutton from knee to foot and flap aside. 
His spurs are silver, big and heavy and costly, and fitted 
to buckle round his high -cut heel. Under his left leg is 
fastened a broad-bladed and beautiful curved sword, with 
a hilt worthy an hidalgo. 



138 RISING TO A TROT 

The seat of the average Mexican exquisite is the perfect 
pattern of a clothes-pin. Leaning against the cantle, he will 
stretch his legs forward and outward, with heels depressed 
in a fashion which reminds one of Sydney Smith's saying, 
that he did not object to a clergyman riding if only he 
rode very badly and turned out his toes. It is the very 
converse of riding close to your horse. In what it origi- 
nates it is hard to guess, unless bravado. The cowboy, 
with an equally short seat and long stirrups, keeps his legs 
where they belong, and if his leg is out of perpendicular, 
it will be so to the rear. Not all Mexicans ride the clothes- 
pin seat. There are many riders of good style to be seen 
in the City of Mexico, and there are good horsemen. But 
when the pure Mexican rider puts on a bit of " side" he is 
deliciously ungainly in a horseman sense, though always 
picturesque to the every -day beholder. 

The rack rarely, the canter all but universally, is ridden 
by the Mexican. It is only the Englishman and those he 
has taught who ride what can be called a trot. With all 
others the trot is a mere jog, though a good open trot is 
one of the easiest gaits for a horse to go, and, risen to, one 
of the most delightful on the road. Luckily, as the horses 
of the world gain in breeding by the infusion of English 
stock, so the w T orld is learning the English habit of rising. 
When I was a school-boy in Prussia I was fairly hooted out 
of rising to a trot, a habit I had previously learned in Eng- 
land. But now you see the Prussians — all the Continental 
officers, in fact — riding d VAnglaise in full uniform, and 
one may see a lancer or hussar trotting through the streets 
with a handful of despatches, leaning over his horse's neck 
and rising to the gait in a fashion which would have court- 
martialled him in the old ramrod Anglophobia days of 
Frederick William IV. For all they laugh at England 
for her military pretensions, they adopt many good things 



TROT AND CANTER 139 

from her, not the least of which is the course of cross- 
country riding which all foreign officers are now required 
to take ; or rather a course of as near its requirements as 
non-hunting countries can conjure up. Jumping has al- 
ways been part of the drill of the Prussian cavalryman; 
but since the growth of English ideas this exercise has 
been broadened and made more of. It is, however, not 
mere jumping of a thirty -inch obstacle but steady drill 
which really helps shake a man into his saddle in the form 
needed for cavalry evolutions. 

The canter of the Mexican is the old park canter, with 
a superabundant use of the curb to make the horse prance 
and play and show his action. The horse is as fond and 
proud of this as the rider. The best saddle-horse is, of 
course, the one which will absolutely follow his master's 
mood ; upon whose neck the reins can be flung if one 
wishes to saunter along the road, or if one wishes to dis- 
mount and rest sub tegmine fagi ; and who, at call, can 
show his paces to the best advantage. Most horses are 
treated solely as a means of transportation, even in hunt- 
ing and polo ; few receive the training every intelligent 
horse is as much entitled to as the American child to his 
common schooling. And in a sense the Mexican has edu- 
cated his horse to better advantage. Because his horse is 
prancing it is no reason why we should look down upon 
him. He is doing nothing more than the men who used 
to go titupping down Rotten Row every fine afternoon of 
fifty years ago ; and he may be a better rider than he 
looks. The steady, business-like gaits of the English nag 
of to-day are in perfect keeping with his rider's business 
suit ; but you notice that the Mexican wears a differ- 
ent habit. Why, then, should not his riding be in keep- 
ing with his dress ? 

This trot and canter controversv is not vet settled. The 



140 FAST WALKING 

Englishman claims that his horse can go seven miles on a 
trot for six he can go on a canter with the same exertion. 
Our cavalry officers on the plains— and they are the best 
judges of distance riding alive— have arrived at a similar 
conclusion, and all long marches are made at alternate 
walk or trot, or walk alone. Most cavalry does this. It 
is astonishing how fast a walk can be, not in the excep- 
tional horse, but in a large body of cavalry. General 
Forsyth marched four troops of the Seventh Cavalry from 
Fort Meade, Da., to Fort Riley, Kan., a distance of seven 
hundred and twenty-nine miles. This was measured by 
odometers, checked off by the railroad mileage when trav- 
elling along it. " The maximum rate per hour was 4.91 
miles ; the minimum rate was 3.20 miles. The mean aver- 
age per hour for the entire march was 4.11 miles. It is 
to be understood that the gait considered is the walk, as 
that was the one pursued during the march." ~Now the 
speed of the average saddle -beast on a walk is, in the 
Eastern States, barely three miles an hour, because he is 
not educated. If you have owned a horse which could 
walk four full miles, you have been lucky. Most men, 
walking a three-and-a-half-mile gait, out-pace the riders 
they meet who are walking their horses. It takes a very 
busy horse to out-walk a fair pedestrian. Yet here, by 
training, we have four troops of cavalry averaging over 
four miles an hour. 

The trot is unquestionably an easy gait for the horse. 
But you cannot make a Southerner or a plainsman adopt 
this theory. The Southern horse goes his so-called arti- 
ficial gaits, or canters ; you cannot give away a trotter 
for the saddle. The bronco canters all but exclusively. 
The matter seems to depend on inbred habit, and compar- 
ative statistics on the subject, however interesting, could 
scarcely be made accurate. 



MEXICO OF NO GOOD 141 

Altogether, the horsemanship of our neighbor in Mex- 
ico is not entirely to be commended. That the cattle 
business originated there, and that that admirable rider, 
the cowboy, traces his descent to that peninsula, is the 
best that can be said of the land, in an equine sense. In- 
deed, Mexico has all but outlived her usefulness. I do 
not believe that even railroads will do for her what it has 
been expected they would. Given certain factors of land 
and people and civilization, such as we understand it, is of 
no benefit, and cannot be made to grow. 



XXVI 

To return to the States, and to follow out the text on 
which we have been so far preaching. It will be accepted 
as a truism that the man or people that does any given 
thing the most constantly will be apt to excel in that one 
thing. Let us apply this to the riding of the Southerner 
;and our own riding in the East. Now the climate and 
soil, the thicker population, the more industrious habits 
of the Eastern and Middle States produced excellent roads 
at a much earlier period than in the South. In fact, there 
are few places in the South to-day where the highways 
can be called even tolerable. The soil is intractable for 
roads. Good roads are wont to be followed by wheeled 
transportation, poor roads force people to cling to the sad- 
dle. When the Northern farmer goes to the nearest town 
he drives, because the roads are good, and he can carry 
his stuff to better advantage; the Southerner rides, be- 
cause the roads for a great part of the year are impassa- 
ble to wheels. This breeds the universal habit of horse- 
back-work. The same thing applies to women. To visit 
their neighbors, go to church or shopping in the nearest 
village, the women must make use of the saddle. This 
necessity of the country, where the roads are bad, becomes 
habit of the city, where the roads are better. The South- 
erner has been in the saddle constantly for many genera- 
tions, and to-day boys and girls alike ride the colts in 
pasture with, like the Numidian of old, only a stick to 
guide them. In the North these conditions and habits 



RIDING A RECENT FAD 143 

ceased long ago. Riding is a mere fashion of ver} T recent 
origin, though it has acquired such an impetus that it has 
doubtless come to stay. 

It is curious how short the period is since riding became 
even a fad, let alone a fashion. I was put on the retired 
list of the Army, and went to Boston in 1870. As I had 
always done, I kept up my habit of daily riding, and for 
years after that time, so unusual was the sight of a man 
in the saddle, except on procession days, that the urchins 
on the street used to hoot at me, or even throw a derisive 
pebble in my wake. Up to 18S2 you could count the ha- 
bitual riders of Boston on your fingers, and it was about 
the same in New York. For several years I rode in and 
out of Boston a handsome mare sired by Alexander's 
" Norman," and the opinion of horseback- work was well 
voiced by a noted horseman who once said to me, " What 
are you doing with that mare in the saddle ? Why, she 
belongs on the track !" as if you ought not to disgrace a 
fine horse by throwing your leg across him. Shortly af- 
ter began the fad, and in a dozen years we have made 
such vast strides forward that riding now appears to be a 
matter of ancient histor} T . You surprise a young man to- 
day by telling him that in 1880 practically no one rode ; 
yet such was the fact all through the Eastern States. 

It is noticeable that we Eastern riders are touchy on 
the subject of equestrianism, like most people not to the 
manner born. We are fain to believe, perhaps, not that 
the Southerner knows nothing about riding, but that what 
he knows is either all wrong or else not worth our learn- 
ing. It must be confessed that for the very few years we 
have been at it we have accomplished wonders, and our 
riding to hounds, though the poor benighted pack may be 
all too often wheedled into chasing aniseseed, has, so far 
as concerns pluck and enthusiasm, grown to be almost be- 



144 ENGLISH SADDLE-BEASTS 

yond criticism. This and polo are the things in which we 
have made marked progress, and we have done well to 
take our model from our British cousins, for in these 
sports they are masters. But in road-riding the English 
can teach us nothing. Much as the English ride they 
know little of the niceties of equitation. What is called 
a good saddle-beast in England will not pass muster among 
those who breed exclusively for the saddle, and ride vast- 
ly more. Thoroughly familiar with the saddle, their style 
of road-riding is none the less far from perfect. They are 
so permeated with the hunting idea that they are con- 
stantly riding to cover in the park. 

Now it is incontestable that the Southerner — though he, 
too, shows points of criticism, as of necessity any class of 
riders must do — is on the whole a better model for road- 
riding than exists elsewhere ; and it is also true that he 
breeds and trains far better saddle-horses than England 
has known for two generations. We Yankees are too 
new and narrow in our recently-acquired sport to be able 
to see this fact, though it is under our very eyes. This is 
natural enough, for we got our riding fever along with our 
athletic fad from across the pond, but it is regrettable. 
Fox-hunting, though on a distinctly cruder plan than in 
the old country, has been a constant practice in the South 
for two hundred years; despite which the English hunt- 
ing model is indisputably better. But in road-riding the 
Southern gentleman is far ahead of the Briton as to his 
gaits and seat and style. A man who hunts regularly 
rides on the road a half-dozen times to once he follows 
the hounds ; one who hunts occasionally does so a hun- 
dred times as often. And yet each, as well as the man 
who never hunts, patterns his seat for the road on the 
hunting model, which was intended for as different a pur- 
pose from mere road-riding as the cowboy's. And each 



L 



SCOPE OF ROAD-RIDING 147 

persists in riding a constant, never-varied trot. The nice 
balance and quick response of the accomplished saddle- 
beast are overlooked. A horse is nowadays not even 
permitted to guide by the neck, while as for suppling his 
croup, or giving him a light forehand, no one ever dreams 
of it. All this is, to say the least, a distinct loss. Some 
men deem such education superfluous ; some cross-country 
men brush such things aside as trivial and unnecessary. 
The world could doubtless have wagged along without 
many of the good things it has — Homer, Michael Angelo, 
Beethoven. But by how much is it better for having 
them ! So with equitation. The opposition to the horse's 
education among hunting men is the mediaeval outcry of 
class prejudice. The more liberal the world, the less 
there is of it ; the more we ride, the more we shall find 
that a horse well educated is a horse twice told. 

Our imitation of the English comes of a sincere desire 
to flatter; and imitation is what oils the wheels of prog- 
ress. When we have not what is worthy of imitation at 
home, let us by all means go abroad ; but when we have 
the best in our very midst, it is little to our credit to go 
searching elsewhere. 

The first duty of the cross-country rider is to save his 
horse, because the service required of him on each occa- 
sion of use is exceptionally great. The performance of a 
good hunter throughout a hard day's sport is very taxing. 
The road-rider need not seek to save his horse, because he 
covers but a tithe of the distance at any one time. Hence 
the rule of the road is that the horse shall, first of all, sub- 
serve his rider's comfort. The most comfort resides pri- 
marily in ease, next in variety of gaits. And no one who 
has learned the Southern gaits can deny -their superior 
ease. The proof lies in the fact that they enable a man 
to ride without undue exertion in hot as well as cold 



f 



148 THE SOUTHERN SEAT 

weather. To one who knows it, nothing can be more in- 
spiriting than a fine open trot ; but a horse which can 
go Southern gaits can trot besides, and, if the rider is as 
clever as he, without injury to his other paces. 

The Southern seat is practically the same as the true 
military seat ; and except that the bridle-hand is wont to 
be held a trifle too high — which is a habit caught from the 
high pommel or roll of blankets or other baggage in 
front of the soldier — this seat, when not exaggerated, is, all 
things considered, the best for road -riding, and perhaps 
would enable a man to do a greater variety of things in 
the saddle than any other one style. And though the 
English pigskin is perhaps a neater and more available 
rig for our city needs, the Southerner is, in gaits and style 
and knowledge of road work, by far the best model for 
us to copy, as his saddle-beast is the best for us to buy. 
This question of gaits is one to which we shall specially 
recur when, in our equestrian trip across the water to the 
original home of the horse, we find the habits that obtain 
there. 



XXYII 

Taking him as the type of a class, the Central Park 
rider has his good points and he has his bad ones. When 
he is new to his work and over-imitates the English style, 
he is at his worst ; when he is used to the saddle he 
throws aside blind imitation and rides well. He steers 
clear of the showy tendencies of the Gaul, the military 
flavor which still clings to the civilian Teuton, and the 
extreme hunting type of the Briton. 

I am aware that in what I say I am liable to be mis- 
construed by many of our riding-men, to be looked upon 
as impregnated with Anglophobia. This is an error. 
I have lived many years in England, and yield to no man 
in my admiration for the open-hearted, generous, plucky, 
prejudiced, self-adoring Briton. But love me love my — 
horse is unintelligent if proverbial. " How can you love 
that drunken wretch?" asked a sympathetic friend of a 
lachrymose wife. "You be still!" came the quick and 
positive reply ; " I love every bone in his body — but con- 
found his nasty ways !" Here is a neat distinction. "We 
may love our British cousin and yet not adopt his style. 

There is no better horseman than the Briton, no better 
rider. Few are as good. At his own sports — hunting and 
polo and racing — he may almost be said to be unequalled. 
But from these premises one must not draw the conclu- 
sion that he is master of everything else. Too many 
hard-riding English cross-country men have found on our 
plains that they could not hold a candle to the average 



150 BRITON VS. SOUTHRON 

cowboy, to make this assumption safe. Very few English 
cavalry officers could ride across our plains as our own 
have learned by rough experience to do. And the color 
which fox-hunting lends to road -riding seriously limits 
the average Briton's skill in the park. Still the best rider 
of England is well worthy of imitation. The trouble 
with our young men, whose few months in the saddle 
makes them feel as if they had nothing more to learn, is 
that they imitate the English groom — and the poor one 
at that — and not the English gentleman. As well study 
art from prize - package chromos ! Some of the tricks 
which one sees taken up from time to time have their 
origin among the poorest horsemen. The elbows akimbo 
or the swinging legs illustrate my meaning. Of course 
Swelldom must have a new shibboleth every now and 
then. Hands must be shaken just so, or hats must be 
taken off or kept on by some mystic rule, or some un- 
meaning lingo must be used at meeting or parting. This 
is all well enough as a pastime, or as a cachet of the 
order, as a password ; but when tricks in the saddle are 
adopted from some questionable source, they may in 
truth indicate that a man belongs to a certain clique, but 
they do not demonstrate that he knows how to ride. 
And this last happens to be the point of view we are tak- 
ing. Such things are as harmless as they are ephemeral, 
but it must be expected that they will evoke the smile 
rather than the admiration of those who know. 

To recur to our British-Southron controversy, and put- 
ting aside the peculiar uses of the English seat, let us sup- 
pose an Englishman and a Southerner passing under the 
eye of an unprejudiced Arab, a man riding in the style of 
neither and yet a born horseman. The former trots by on 
his rangy thorough-bred, with stirrups short, leaning over 
his horse's withers, both hands busy with his reins, but 




A HUNTING MAN 



SOUTHERN GAITS 153 

showing entire familiarity with and control of his splen- 
did mount, and his legs perhaps swinging to and fro with 
the motion. The latter comes along on an equally well- 
bred horse with longer leathers, upright in the saddle, one 
hand with a single curb lightly reining in his quickly 
moving single-footer. Though the Arab is used to both 
the shorter stirrups and the leaning seat, think you he 
would hesitate on pronouncing the Southerner the more 
graceful and expert? It is not that the Englishman is 
not a good pattern, but that for road-riding we have a 
better one at home. Assertions such as these are Avont 
to provoke a sneer from the Anglomaniac ; but a sneer is 
not argument; it is the resort of ignorance. Answer 
there is none, unless a man will in the same breath main- 
tain that education is unfitted for a horse, as some assert 
that it is lost on women. Despite our slight veneer of 
Anglomania, however, we are sound American within, 
and shall not long neglect what can be taught us by our 
own countrymen, who have been in the saddle as many 
generations as the English, and been compelled to a much 
greater degree to use horses for daily work as well as 
pleasure. One may see it coming now. The Kentucky 
horse is by no means as often despoiled of his accomplish- 
ments when he reaches a New York owner as he used to 
be, and a better welcome is given him at the Horse-show\ 
But either the Southern gaits should be recognized as 
suitable ones for a park hack in addition to the walk, trot, 
and canter, or else a special class should be provided. It 
is a mistake to overlook these gaits — the most universally 
employed of any among all peoples which are adepts in 
horsemanship. 

I have often seen in England a man who prided himself 
on the speed of his park -hack's walk. He called it a 
"walk" — so would a Southerner; but it was a " running- 



154 A RUNNING-WALK 

walk," not a flat-footed one, which, as horses sometimes 
will, his nag had inherited from some distant ancestor or 
picked up of his own accord. No horse, except one spe- 
cially trained, walks flat-footed more than four miles an 
hour. The running- walk will add a mile or a mile and a 
half to this speed. The Englishman saw no difference, 
even if it was an amble or a rack his horse fell into ; he 
still called it a walk, because it was neither trot nor can- 
ter. But the flat-footed walk, the running-walk, the am- 
ble, and the rack are all as distinct as trot and canter. 
The English in Egypt will ride the racking donkey week 
in, week out, and yet I never met one who knew why the 
little fellow was so easy, or what gait he was going. They 
will condemn in the horse what they like in the ass. 

These so-called artificial paces are not such in fact. 
Every horse under the excitement of the whip or of 
fright will fall into one or other of them. Everj^ people 
which habitually rides at a walk — i.e., travels on horse- 
back — trains the horse, by simple urging, into these paces ; 
even the ass -colts in Southern Europe or in the Orient 
running-walk. I have seen many a racker of true Nor- 
man blood. You find the gaits among all sorts and con- 
ditions of horses; but the Southerner has caught the idea, 
and has developed it into an art ; he has trained his sad- 
dle-beasts to perfect paces, and has bred for their perpetu- 
ation. These are no more artificial than the trot, which 
is, indeed, by some of the best English authorities, pro- 
nounced an artificial gait. The marvellous Cossack pony 
" Seri," whom Sotnik Dmitri Peshkof rode in the winter 
of 1890-91 across Siberia from the Pacific to St. Peters- 
burg, five thousand five hundred miles, in one hundred and 
ninety-three days — over twenty-eight miles a day, includ- 
ing several detentions, or thirty-seven miles per travelling- 
day, mostly on roads covered with snow-drifts — was a 



"PEA VINE" 155 

running-walker, and did the bulk of the distance at this 
gait. This is one of the very best records of extreme dis- 
tance ridden on the books — meaning a course of thousands 
rather than hundreds of miles. Iso comparison of endur- 
ance required can well be instituted between this perform- 
ance and the heretofore quoted ride of three hundred 
miles in three consecutive nights, repeated weekly for six 
months and over, though the latter strikes me as by far 
the greater feat ; for the average per day is nearly forty- 
three miles for an equal or longer period, and the exer- 
tion of the long night rides vastly more taxing. 

My daughters for years rode a noble little thorough-bred 
Kentucky saddle-horse, handsome as a picture and easy 
as a cradle, who could walk flat-footed four miles and 
a half in sixty. minutes ; could running- walk five and a 
half, rack seven, single-foot up to twelve, and in harness 
or under saddle trot a 'forty-gait as square as any horse 
ever shod. This does not count his canter and gallop, 
manners, or divers other accomplishments. Each gait was 
so distinct that you could call it out by a word or a turn 
of the bridle-wrist, and tell it from the others with your 
eyes shut. Was " Pea Vine" not a better park hack than 
if he were confined to the plain walk, trot, and canter? 
And yet most of our Eastern fashionables would answer 
nay, and on general principles our above -cited Briton 
would sneer at the idea of riding "artificial" gaits, though 
he has, without knowing it, been felicitating himself on 
his nag's possessing such a gait. I must, however, say 
that I think a Briton would be more open to conviction 
by a proper demonstration than some of our home imi- 
tators of his methods. 

It is odd how obtuse even an old horseman can be who 
has not studied these gaits. I have seen judges at horse- 
shows and prize competitions give a walking prize to a 



156 KNOWLEDGE OF GAITS 

running-walker over flat-footed walkers who were going 
a superb gait. Of course the " runner " (as they often 
call him for short south of Mason and Dixon's line) out- 
footed the others. You might as well give a prize for 
speed to a horse who won a trotting race at a gallop. 
The amble is often* called a walk. " You have no idea 
how easy and fast my new horse can walk !" I have fre- 
quently heard from people whose recent purchase couldn't 
walk three miles an hour, but would amble a four and a 
half gait. Perhaps it is no wonder. I have known few 
horsemen who could analyze the several gaits, though 
they might recognize them. It was only when Muy- 
bridge's lens told the story that people found out how a 
horse moves his feet at a gallop. I think I have met not 
exceeding half a dozen men in the course of my life who 
could describe the sequence of a horse's feet at every gait, 
the intervals at which they reach the ground, and especially 
what a horse does when he changes gaits or changes lead 
in the canter or gallop, though I have met thousands 
who knew all the gaits blindfolded. These are pleasant 
technical studies, but they are perhaps rather beyond the 
domain of essential knowledge. We do not need to be 
philological critics in order thoroughly to enjoy "Hamlet." 
It is not through lack of technical knowledge, but by dis- 
regard of the thing itself that the refinements of equita- 
tion have disappeared. 

The day of practical horsemanship has come, and well 
it is perhaps. No one doubts the superiority for average 
use of a hack well trained a VAnglaise over the nervous, 
fidgety, watch-springy creature of the high-school. But 
is there not a middle point between ignorance and over- 
training ? A small amount of knowledge of a great art, 
or intimacy with a small art, are wont to make the pos- 
sessor " feel his oats." " Oh, you play the violin, do you?" 



BANJO VS. VIOLIN 157 

says the chappie who carries a felt-covered banjo under 
his arm on the way to the sea-side, or to an evening call 
on some pretty girl ; " the fiddle isn't of much account 
nowadays." It is true, is it not ? And yet when a man 
has devoted over forty years to the instrument, has played 
the sonatas of Beethoven and Mozart for a generation, 
and owns a Stradivarius, does not this crude criticism 
sound harsh % The pity of it is that life is not long enough 
to explain the AB C of music to the banjoist. Certes, he 
can amuse his audience better than the man with the bow, 
who has not the remotest desire to compete with him ; but 
is it because the violin is not the superior instrument, or 
because the player and audience lack equal cultivation ? 
That there is a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time 
to mourn and a time to dance is recognized by even the 
violinist, but — well, I was going to say that the banjo- 
horse is a capital mount for the banjo-boy or the banjo- 
girl ; but if a man with loving persistence has embraced 
his Cremona for twoscore years, has drawn forth its deli- 
cate tones as a comfort through the gloom of nights of 
sorrow, and has burst forth with it at the daybreak of re- 
newed J^ope in anthems of gladness, both his soul and the 
quivering song-laden wood wrapt in mutual affectionate 
bliss, he prefers this poet of instruments to the banjo ; 
when a man has once studied equitation in its finer feat- 
ures, and has trained his horses to perfect gaits and man- 
ners, he prefers the educated steed. But we have not yet 
reached the point where brains go for as much as money, 
or for what some people are pleased to call Society, though 
we are fast getting there. The Chinese are ahead of us ; 
among them the school-master ranks as he should. When 
one thinks of the society which clusters about our College 
greens and the world-famous work which emanates from 
their studious closets, and then goes to his book-shelves, 



158 ANCESTRY 

takes down a certain light blue book, entitled Society As I 
Have Found It, reads a page or two, and then contem- 
plates this outcome of what some people consider all 
that is choicest, may he not truly rejoice that his life's 
ticket is numbered in the thousands and not ivithin 
four hundred ? Did not the genial Autocrat say some- 
thing anent the clergymen and doctors — the Brahmins 
— of New England being good enough ancestry for any 
one ? And is not a pedigree honestly traced back to the 
brave men who landed at Plymouth Bock better than a 
coat of arms got up by a heraldry expert (!) for some 
nouveau riche who doesn't know who was his great- 
grandfather % I for one am proud that my grandfather 
was pastor of First Church, Haverhill, and that my 
great-grandfather was one of the heroes of Bunker Hill ; 
but I would give more to-day for old Seth Pomeroy's 
anvil, or the vice which clamped the muskets he repaired 
for the Massachusetts militia, than for the sword he 
wore as a colonel in the French wars. The Dodge who 
landed with the Salem company in 1629 is a forebear 
who satisfies all my ambition for ancestry. If we 
Americans cease to be proud of the thew and sinew of 
our forefathers, of the soil and the laws which have 
brought forth such a man as Abraham Lincoln and made 
him President of the Republic, what have we left ? Are 
we to become a plutocracy pure and simple ? 



XXVIII 

When we reach the cross-country rider of our Eastern 
States, as typified in such hunts as the Genesee Yalley, 
the Meadow Brook, the Radnor, or the Myopia, we touch 
our hats with a thrill of admiration as the red-coats ride 
to the meet, and wonder at the genuine Yankee grit and 
intelligence which have so soon popularized this sport 
among us. Not that we can have the real article in 
hunting in our severe northern climate, or under condi- 
tions which substitute a drag for Reynard's nimble legs 
and cunning twists and turns. Still, it is rare that a fox in 
our Eastern States will give you as good a run as a drag. 
The country is such that you cannot ride over it in every 
direction at will, as you can in England, and a fox has so 
many covers near at hand that you can never be sure of 
even a short run. This does not apply to the Genesee 
Yalley. Fox-hunting there is the rule, and a drag is laid 
only to accommodate those who ride to jump fences in- 
stead of jumping fences because they are hunting across 
a country and won't be left behind. But the boldness, 
skill, and enthusiasm of our hunting -men are beyond 
praise, and there is plucky riding and good among them. 
It is, moreover, certain that in no part of the Old Country 
is there such breakneck timber as we find in several of 
our hunts — say the Meadow Brook. 

I have often thought that as fine an exhibit of horse- 
manship as can be found is that of the middle-aged Eng- 
lish country -gentleman, who has ridden to hounds since 



160 AMERICAN FOX-HUNTING 

boyhood, has outgrown the dare-devil, and lost somewhat 
of the muscle and elasticity of his youth, but who still, by 
his fine sense of the capacity of his horse, his light hands, 
and perfect judgment, is able to keep in the next field 
with the hounds throughout a long run over a stiff coun- 
try. As there is perhaps no animal equal to the best 
hunter in his all-round qualities, unless it be an Al Ken- 
tucky combined horse, so there is perhaps no more perfect 
thing in equitation than this intelligent riding. It soars 
above the breakneck performance as a line of Milton 
above the epic of Commencement. We do not often see 
this kind of thing here ; the dare-devil still predominates : 
but none the less, hail to the youth and strength and man- 
liness which have sought an outlet in this splendid sport ! 
A generation ago the same spirit thronged the tented 
field, and marched up to the Bloody Angle with teeth set 
and heart aglow with heroic passion. And it is this true 
Anglo-Saxon mettle which can always be relied on to 
come to the fore in our times of need. May it never die 
out! 

In a few sections of country fox-hunting is older; in 
fact, has become not only almost an hereditary sport, but 
one in which the farmers take an equal part and interest. 
This is as it should be. Hunting can never thrive when 
only the rich may indulge in it. When a country is so stiff 
that none but exceptional horses can get over it, and a 
field is limited to a dozen men on nags averaging a couple 
of thousand dollars each, it is hard to see a future in the 
sport. Were it not for some localities where the sport 
has run through a generation or two, even though there 
has been no regular Plunt and M. F. H., one would fear 
its extinction when fashion shall have brought some other 
form of athletics into prominence. But it is probable that 
hunting has taken firm root ; and though our climate can- 



-,,.,. ..-,,, 




GENTLEMAN RIDER IN CENTRAL PARK 



BIG OR LITTLE HORSES? 163 

not be coaxed, nor foxes quickly bred, there is small dan- 
ger that the riding part of the sport will soon be lost. 

This sport has shown us what capital material we have 
in this country for hunters. Our American horses are 
wonderful in their serviceableness. They have done bet- 
ter across our country than the expensive imported Eng- 
lish and Irish ones. The difficulty of acclimation of the 
latter has something to do with this ; but few things have 
shown the adaptability of our stock to any work better 
than the number of horses of trotting blood that have 
turned out fast gallopers, big timber-jumpers, and stayers 
besides. 

There seems to be a growing tendency to breed for size. 
May it not be a mistake ? It is doubtful if the hunter of 
over sixteen hands averages as well, all things considered, 
as the one which is somewhat under this measure, though 
big thorough-breds are needed for some men. Certainly, 
for plain saddle- work fifteen -two is a better size, com- 
manding vastly more activity if less stride. Moreover, 
big horses are not always weight - carriers any more than 
they are weight -pullers. The work of the world is done, 
the speed of the world is attained, the races of the world 
are won, by the smaller specimens; but to-day's fashion 
is set for either a polo -pony or a sixteen-and-a-half hands 
thorough- bred. The ten inches between the two are 
skipped, though the best performances have almost inva- 
riably been between these two limits and well under the 
higher one. 

I may here say a word anent the American horse as a 
racer. Some Englishmen are wont to underrate our cli- 
mate, so far as it relates to horse-breeding ; but this has nev- 
er been a country of racing. Our national sport has, until 
lately, been trotting ; and a country which has produced 
a "Sunol," an "Arion," and a "Nancy Hanks," may well 



164 AMERICAN THOROUGH-BREDS 

claim pre-eminence for its effect upon the horse. There is 
nothing in breeding to parallel our reducing trotting speed 
from 2.26| by "Lady Suffolk" — which many men still 
remember to have seen — down to " Nancy Hanks's " 2.05 
in 1892. Nor need we feel like taking a back seat in 
racing. We have had altogether too much good-luck, even 
by our second-raters, on English turf, to feel discouraged, 
and our records are of the very best. So good an author- 
ity as Count Lehndorf, in his Horse -Breeding Recollec- 
tions, says : 

"Experience points to America as the source from 
which to draw in future the regenerating fluid, for, al- 
though the American thorough-bred takes its origin from 
England, and is still more or less related to its English 
prototype, the exterior appearance and the more recently 
shown superiority of American horses lead to the conclu- 
sion that the evidently favorable climate, and the, to a 
great extent, virgin soil of America — in every respect dif- 
ferent from ours — gradually restore the whole nature of 
the horse to its pristine vigor, and make the American 
racer appear eminently qualified to exercise an invigo- 
rating influence on the condition of the thorough-breds of 
the mother- country, enfeebled, perhaps, by oft -repeated 
inbreeding." 

This is from a source entirely impartial, and one often 
quoted in England. 



XXIX 

We have during the past dozen years drawn from our 
tap of Anglomania a mug brimful of good. How easy it 
is to blow away the froth which rests on the excellent 
draught below ! One of the most exhilarating of our im- 
ported sports is polo, and as it happens that our plains 
furnish so excellent a mount, and our increasing out-of- 
doors habits so many players, the game may well become 
a national one. The motto of the day in English sports 
is speed. Fox-bunting of the last generation was a mod- 
est performance at a hand-gallop ; Sir Roger de Coverley 
rode to hounds at a canter. But within twoscore years 
the cross-country pace has been run up to racing speed. 
More and more thorough blood has been called for in 
both park and field, and the old-fashioned hunter of our 
sires could not live through the shortest burst to-day. 
The same thing applies to polo — the faster and more able 
the pony the better the performance of his rider. You 
can get enormous weight - carrying capacity in an un- 
derbred pony, as well as remarkable endurance, but not at 
speed. When you call on a fourteen-hands pony to carry 
a hundred and sixty pounds and upwards at speed, you 
must have blood. Even the veriest weed of an undersized 
thorough-bred will do wonders in this way. The sudden 
bursts of racing pace called out at polo have made the 
English breed for small thorough -breds. Capital polo 
mounts have been raised from the handy little Exmoor 
pony with blooded sires. More barrel comes of this cross 



166 ENDURANCE AT SPEED 

together with a certain hardiness ; but the little knife- 
blade thorough-bred will often carry as big a man, and en- 
durance at speed is the inheritance only of his race. These 
words, in fact, sum up that peculiar quality which has not 
yet been reached in any other animal, except, perhaps, in 
the greyhound. But when we say thorough-bred there 
is a limited and a broader meaning. The pure Arabian is 
not, quoad the Stud Book, a thorough-bred ; quoad blood 
he is so. But to speak of the good blood in the plains pony 
sounds absurd until you reflect upon where he came from. 

So much for the English pony. When we come to 
riders, it will be many years before we can boast the skill 
of our transatlantic cousins, or either of us that of the 
Japanese, with their light cup -wands for mallets and 
feather-weight balls. The American polo -fields by no 
means exhibit the play you see in England. Many a man 
here indulges in recklessness which would warn him off 
the ground at Hurlingham, though our cracks are really 
experts. It takes years at the game to produce the at- 
mosphere which breeds perfection, and in the twenty it 
has been played in England it has wellnigh reached this 
point. But it is well to persevere. We are making marked 
progress in all our sports, and polo may yet become as 
much of a national gamo as base-ball, though let us hope 
without its commercial aspect. 

The American polo -pony is no other than our little 
bronco friend. Many come from Texas, Wyoming, Mon- 
tana. The clever cow-pony is ready trained for the polo- 
ground. He will catch the idea of the game as quickly 
as he caught the trick of cow-punching, and he has al- 
ready learned to stop and turn and twist as only he can 
do. It must not be forgotten that he has precisely the 
same blood in his veins which has placed the English thor- 
ough-bred so far above all other horses. He has increased 



' 







A SORRY SPECIMEN 169 

his stock of endurance and hardiness by his struggle for 
existence on the plains, and for this game he is, perhaps, 
the equal of any pony, whatever his breeding, and within 
the limits of the polo-field his speed is as great — some 
good judges say greater. That is an open question. He 
is fast enough. 

When he is taken off the cars on arrival here from his 
familiar haunts on the cattle-ranges, he is the sorriest, 
gauntest, most miserable equine specimen one can find in 
a day's tramp. He doesn't look worth a peck of oats. 
But he will reward your care. In a month or two you 
would never guess your plump, handsome, able little pony 
to be the same individual. You cannot kill a bronco. No 
other animal will recover from such Strapazen, as the 
Germans phrase it. And when he has undergone the tort- 
ure of docking, and is finally invested with the pig-skin, 
nothing but the brand remains of the ragged little hero of 
the plains. 

The pony is used to a single gag-bit ; but he is tracta- 
ble in his own odd way, and not a few will learn to work 
perfectly in a snaffle. So many of our polo -players re- 
quire the bridle as a means of support that the loose rein 
of the cowboy will by no means do. The perfect polo- 
rider has not yet made his appearance. Under him the 
bronco would more quickly become the perfect polo- 
pon}^. It would take but a few months' training to teach 
him to guide by the legs alone, if need be. Indeed, his 
Indian master made him do just this. He learns to fol- 
low the ball in a few days. There is no sport in which 
training would be better rewarded than in polo, and 
though it would be useless to aim at the delicacy of the 
haute ecole — fdr the sharp runs and stops of polo make 
this as practically impossible as it is in hunting — still, 
given a rider with perfect seat, without a suspicion of 



170 THE POLO SEAT 

riding the bridle, and a pony which was taught to guide 
by leg-pressure alone, and it would seem that they should, 
other things being equal, be the best players in the game. 
The polo-player's seat varies very little from the nat- 
ural, and the best of them are consummate horsemen. 
Few things call out good riding more than polo ; nothing 
trains a man quicker or better. While hunting can never 
attain more than an imitative standing in our rigorous 
climate, polo may become domesticated, and, except that 
it must be played on ponies, is as good an educator in 
horsemanship. 





XXX 

If there is any one kind of riding between the worst of 
which and the best there is a great gulf fixed, it is the 
jockey's. Unless that demolisher of pet traditions and 
shams — instantaneous photography — had shown us the 
extremity to which bad jockeyship could be carried, Ave 
should scarcely credit the mechanical possibility of some 
of the positions the track-rider can assume. The average 
jockey has no more to do with winning a race than the 
time -keeper — in a neck -and -neck race by no means so 
much. You will see him suspended, as it were, in four- 
fold straps — his stirrups and the bridle-reins — one quadru- 
ped bestriding another, and not the more intelligent atop. 
He relies as much on the reins as he does on the leathers, 
and has no control over his horse, no power to save or 
coax him whatsoever. Considering who the jockeys are, 
what their training is, and what the average race is like, 
this is no great wonder. But Fordham and Cannon and 
Archer did not ride this way, not to mention older celeb- 
rities ; nor do our own better jockeys. It is a thousand 
pities that we have no photographs of Archer stealing 
one of his celebrated races. The ability to ride a puller in 
a snaffle-bridle, or to win with a slack rein without whip 
or spur, is as unusual as the art of coaxing a horse, and of 
making the most of his courage or nervousness or obsti- 
nacy. How many modern jockeys study their horses, or 
can cut and whip a race out of a slug, or wheedle it out of 
a sulky jade? They use steel and whalebone on the will- 



172 A PHENOMENAL JOCKEY 

iug and unwilling alike. Delicate mouth-touching is the 
rarest of the jockey's arts; almost every jockey here 
" rides twice as fast as his horse is going." 

Waiting races are not run in America. Kunning is 
made from start to finish in the majority of cases. But 
when a race is run between a few good jockeys, this rule 
is not always followed. There has as yet been no phe- 
nomenal jockey produced in the States; but it may 
fairly be claimed that our best jockeys come well up in 
the second rank. Do not misunderstand this phrase. 
Among great captains only Alexander, Cassar, Hannibal, 
Gustavus Adolphus, Frederick, and Napoleon are placed 
by the best critics in the first rank ; such men as Philip, 
Pompey, Turenne, Marlborough, Prince Eugene, Welling- 
ton, Lee, and Yon Moltke come only in the second rank, 
which, after all, is good enough for any one but a demigod. 
That the common jockey here is less good than in Eng- 
land is simply due to the fact that there he serves at least 
a species of apprenticeship, while here he springs full- 
armed from his own brain. 

Please note that I am not undertaking to criticise the 
riding of our better jockeys ; I have seen some beautiful 
work at home. I purposely use no names, lest some 
should think me partial or unsound — you see I am wise 
in my generation — and refer only to individuals who are 
now translated. Nor am I an habitue of the race-track; I 
do not consider my opinion the ultima thule on this sub- 
ject, as I might on — well, never mind now. But that we 
have not had a man who could, by his profession alone, 
before he had got within a distance of middle life, accu- 
mulate a fortune of over a million dollars, is clear; yet 
Archer did it. With our running-horses we have done 
great things ; our American records are not to be ques- 
tioned, and we need not be ashamed of our records in 



. 



A PHENOMENAL DRIVER 175 

England, from the days of game " Prioress " down. But 
Avhile we have had truly phenomenal drivers of trotting- 
horses — among the dead let me piously refer to that 
noble horseman, Hiram Woodruff — I do not think we can 
claim to have developed a genius among jockeys. It is 
perhaps no wonder, for great as are the strides made by 
us in raising and running thorough-breds, the sport is not 
what it is in England; whereas trotting has long been 
our national sport, and at this we are so far beyond the 
rest of the world that trotters from any other part of the 
globe are " not in it." Those beautiful black Orloffs 
which came over from Russia to out-trot us some twenty 
years ago, and which were really able ten or twenty 
milers, were simply nowhere. They would have gone 
into the 'thirty class. 

In olden times cathedrals were built, as they cannot be 
to-day, because then the whole sentiment, love, and am- 
bition of the people were centred in the work. Unless a 
thing is a national institution, so to speak, it can never 
'become truly great, as it surely will if it is upheld by the 
entire community. So with any sport. Base-ball thrives 
in America, cricket in England, because each evokes the 
popular interest. Racing is a more national affair in 
Great Britain than it is with us. 



XXXI 

Theee have always been in America a few isolated ex- 
ponents of the high-school of equitation. Very naturally 
they have as a rule been foreigners, in most cases riding- 
school teachers, sometimes men stranded on our coasts 
with no resource but what they had learned in better 
times at home. In our old regular army there used to 
be many high - school riders ; to-day there are few ; the 
old style has given out with us as it has in England. "We 
are in the era of the practical ; the artistic has been lost 
sight of. No doubt this is for the best ; it is our immense 
American practicality which has taught the world what 
the doctrine of the greatest good to the greatest number 
can accomplish. But, stripped of all its artistic qualities, 
life becomes sadly prosaic ; and no one, I ween, will claim 
our age of telegraph and telephone, of sixty miles an hour 
on the rail, and five hundred knots a dsiy at sea, to be an 
artistic age. When a painter cannot, for love or money, 
buy colors which have not in some measure been adulter- 
ated, how can he expect his pictures to last ? The old 
Dutch masters of the fourteenth century still show up in 
their original colors, as bright and glowing as the day 
they were laid on. It is a serious question whether any 
canvas or fresco produced to - day can last two genera- 
tions. We can indeed build a Brooklyn Bridge, but 
whom could we select to decorate a Vatican 1 

The high -school rider does not thrive because he fails 
to appeal to our practical side. He will begin by telling 



THE HIGH-SCHOOL AIRS lV7 

you that it will take you five years to learn the rudi- 
ments of horsemanship, when you want to ride with 
the hounds, at least as far as the first wall where you 
and your steed part company, so soon as the next fixt- 
ures are made ; and as a result you turn your back on his 
manege and go to a more humdrum school. You want to 
ride a la Ian jo — and right you are ! 

At his best, however, this rider is in his way more of 
an artist than any other man who makes horsemanship 
his profession. My former simile of playing the violin is 
distinctly applicable to him. Some of the work he can do 
is like Paganini's " Carnival of Venice ;" some of it like a 
smooth adagio of Kiicken. The art to-day threatens to 
be lost ; there are few masters left, but we have had some 
American experts who have done great things. Fancy 
bringing a horse to such a degree of confidence in your 
power and his own that you can back him up to an obsta- 
cle, however small, and make him jump it backward ! 
Yet this has been done, while the trot and gallop back- 
ward have always been high -school airs. By trotting 
and galloping backward I do not mean that a horse at- 
tains any speed ; he merely takes the gait, i.e. uses his feet 
in the true sequence of the gait, and progresses backward 
at a very slow rate. Nor is it a gallop ; it is more prop- 
erly a canter or a prance. The name " gallop backward " 
was given when the mechanical action of the gallop was 
not understood, and it still clings. 

The chief point of criticism of the school-rider is per- 
haps that he is too little tolerant of the knowledge of 
others. This is a common error in artists of every pro- 
fession. "They were all wrong, those old chaps!" is still 
the cry of the long-haired fraternity. I speak feelingly 
because I have at times been imbued with the spirit as I 
have enjoyed the delights of the high-school. But I have 

12 



178 OLD MAIDS— BLESS THEM! 

seen too many splendid performers in the saddle all over 
the world, who were anything but school - men, to have 
a grain of prejudice left. I think I can see the high- 
school horse and his rider as they actually are. 

I once knew a charming old maid in England. And, 
by-the-way, do you know, my friend, how much you lose 
by not cultivating the society of old maids ? As the med- 
dlesome mother-in-law has been chosen as the type of a 
class whose power for evil or good we all recognize, but of 
which we know many lovely members, so has the physi- 
cally, mentally, and morally weazened old maid been ig- 
norantly chosen as a type of a class that is, if you will 
take the trouble to study it, as full of admirable quality 
as an egg is full of meat. Why some poet has not arisen 
to sing aloud their virtues I know not. Their very charm 
is their delicate quaintness. We go wild over a dainty, 
odd, old-fashioned bit of china — why, that's just what your 
old maid is, if you'll study the class as much as you have 
bric-a-brac ! We all crowd round and do homage to a 
bud, and neglect her maiden aunt yonder. Unquestion- 
ably the bud has her charms ; what bud has not, carti- 
laginous though she be? But that it is imitation — emu- 
lation if you will — rather than judgment which makes us 
crowd around her, is well shown by the fact that equally 
charming, and often far more intelligent buds, are at the 
very moment lying perdues in the corner by the sides of 
their mammas or their duennas, and sobbing their dear 
little souls away — if, forsooth, they are not indulging in 
hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness. Moreover, the 
bad fades or opens, and in either case is lost, while the old 
maid is perennial, always delightful, always fresh. If you 
know her not, it is your blindness, not her lack of charm. 
Study her, friend ; she will reward thee as no tenth part 
of a popular bud can possibly do. 



THE POET OF INSTRUMENTS 179 

But to my own old maid. Lovely woman, she once 
wrote some charming verses to an entrancing little Danish 
air I had exhumed from the relics of a deceased musical 
antiquary — I am talking of thirty-odd years ago, and she 
was fifteen years my senior then. Well, one day she said, 
at a concert to which I had taken her at St. James's Hall, 
where we had listened to Joachim's wondrous playing, 
" If the organ is the king of instruments, surely the violin 
is the poet." Now, the high-school rider is much like the 
violin — mind you, I have not used the word "fiddle," which 
is quite another instrument, of the banjo order. There is 
no more delicate thing in the world than a horse's mouth, 
and the high-school rider works on its delicacy, while all 
other riders seek to harden it to their own less sensitive 
hands. The fact is undeniable ; the hands of the high- 
school rider are not to be equalled. He must have good 
hands ; he can accomplish no result without them. Eor 
is it the light hand and loose rein of the cowboy or 
Arab, for he feels his horse's mouth at every instant ; he 
talks to him through the bit as no one else ever can. 
The jockey stimulates his horse by the bit, sometimes in 
a marvellous way ; the cross-country rider does the like, 
and rouses his every power at a difficult obstacle. But 
the high-school rider talks a language to his steed which 
is, indeed, Greek to those who have not studied it, which 
is Homeric in its graceful touch and powerful effect. 

Associated with this fact is the question whether such 
a delicate mouth is what one wants. Well — to be quite 
honest, no ; not as a rule. A man who is travelling needs 
a Baedecker rather than a Shakespeare ; we admire, if you 
like, the man who reads Browning before breakfast instead 
of his newspaper ; but — 

Alas, my steed has positively got hold of the bit again, 
and I fear he will gallop into yonder chestnut grove. But 



180 FENCING AS AN ART 

there used, in my youth, to be a story of a Briton who 
was fed pretty constantly in America on that questionable 
confection yclept Washington pie. Being of a quiet and 
unresentf ul habit, he protested not ; but one day, after an 
undue and perhaps underdone infliction of the entremeU 
he is said to have quietly remarked that " doubtless Gen- 
eral Washington was a great and good man, tut d 

his pie !" 

So with the Browning man. We admire his taste, but 
— do not always agree as to his discretion. 

Now, a man who is hunting or playing polo cannot pos- 
sibly utilize or preserve a Browning, i.e., too fine a mouth ; 
he needs a newspaper-mouth. Both these sports originate 
in the rough-and-tumble instincts of our nature, though 
now grown somewhat beyond the crudely physical. Nei- 
ther belongs to the same category as school-riding. They 
are arts in their way, but not arts in the way poetry or 
painting or music is an art, while school-riding is just this. 
How many men fence to-day ? I do not mean the broad- 
sword (though there are few enough of these), or that vig- 
orous if crude imitation of it, single-stick; I mean the 
foils. It is too delicate, too difficult an art to please most 
people. We can learn to spar, if w T e have strength and 
courage, " in six easy lessons." But the small sword, of 
which foils are the practice-weapon, is the study of years 
and years, and yet years. And it is of that nature, like 
all true arts, that it is not necessarily lost by age. None 
of the finer arts depend upon brute strength. When a 
man grows less able physically, he must yield the palm to 
the younger men in the coarser arts ; but not so in fen- 
cing. The crack fencers are almost alwa} T s middle-aged 
men, whom study of their weapon has made perfect, not 
muscle. It demands patience to study fencing, not mere 
vigor. So with high-school riding. It is not a sport like 







THE SPANISH WALK 



hunting or polo, it is an art like fencing or playing the 
harp. In these days of sports, fencing and high -school 
riding are tabooed. Where school-riding is conserved, so 
is fencing, and vice versa. And, to recur to our initial 
idea, you do not require the same delicate mouth and 
hands for the sports that you must have for the art of 
horsemanship. 

Again, as to legs and the spur. The only rider who 
uses his legs for any other purpose than holding on is the 
school-rider. I do not refer to kicking a horse's croup 



182 THE USE OF THE SPUR 

around by violent use of the legs, which the Indian and 
an occasional civilized rider indulge in. The school-rider's 
seat is very firm ; it must be so or he cannot acquire or 
keep light hands ; and in addition to using his legs to 
keep his seat, he uses them intelligently to talk to his 
horse. The delicacy of this use of the legs is equalled 
only by that of the schoolman's hands; nothing but to 
study the subject, and then to watch a master of the art 
ride, can give any idea of what a height this delicacy can 
reach. It is such that unless you know something of the 
art }^ou cannot understand what the master is doing. 
Any one can see the skill of a rider who pilots his animal 
over six feet of timber ; any one can appreciate " Hail 
Columbia " by a brass-band. But it is not every one who 
can understand what a master is doing when he makes 
his horse piaffer; nor can every one appreciate the over- 
ture to "Lohengrin" at its true worth. 

The spur, moreover, by the school method is used not 
to punish or urge on the horse, but to convey certain ideas 
to him. Like the use of the curb-bit, in contradistinction 
or in addition to the use of the snaffle, the spur finds in 
the school -rider a new power— one never dreamed of b\ T 
the rough -riding, cross-country man, or by the active, 
hearty polo-player. There is no question that, so far as 
the pure art of horsemanship is concerned, the fine work 
of the high-school rider soars above any mere sport, just 
as the " linked sweetness " of the 'cello, or the small circle 
of the small-sword hover above the rugged blows of the 
single-stick, or the lascivious pleasing of a lute. Whether 
there is to any given person more enjoyment in the sport 
or in the art is a question of each man's habits, tastes, and 
tendencies. I am far from seeking a quarrel with these. 

Do not imagine, because you give your horse a fairly 
delicate mouth, that this will necessarily spoil him for an 



PATROCLUS 



183 



occasional bit of rougher work. By no means. M} r " Pa- 
troclus," the instant I took up the reins, used to give me 
the most delicate touch of the bit, and keep it so hour 
after hour; but if I wanted a mile or two with the 
hounds, I could let out a link of his curb -chain, use the 
bridoon rather more than the bit, and Pat would take 







CAPRIOLE 



hold of me enough not to mind a twitch on the bit if, in 
going over an awkward place, I did the trick less well 
than he ; and at once, on stopping him, fresh or winded, 
he was ready to give me his school -head again without 
fret or bore. Any horse can learn to do — almost as much. 
What can the high -school rider do? you ask. Well, 



184 USES OF THE SCHOOL 

he can do many wonderful, many beautiful, many useful 
things, not to speak of what he has done for horsemanship 
in the past. Some of the so-called "airs" of the high- 
school are truly wonderful — such as the croupade or the 
capriole, or galloping backwards ; some, such as the piaffer, 
or the Spanish march and trot, are of singular grace ; and 
the fact that by a school -training a dangerous horse may 
be made safe, or a chronic stumbler be taught to catch 
himself always, or the average ungainly, clumsily-moving 
brute be made light and handy, and responsive to the bit 
and legs, demonstrates its usefulness. Is it not useful to 
take a puller, or a horse so high-strung that it is a risk for 
any one to ride him, and make him moderate and safe for 
even a woman to ride, if she is taught what his training 
is, and is trained herself? Have you ever watched horses 
let loose in a pretty paddock after a long confinement in 
the stable, and paid heed to their free step and splendid 
bearing? Well, everything they do of their own accord 
they can be made to do at the bidding of man by a high- 
school training. All this, you think, has no value except 
from an artistic stand -point; but neither, it might be 
claimed, has hunting except as an exercise — in other 
words, it is art versus exercise. Neither statement is an 
argument; and a moderate use of high -school methods 
has a distinct value which we will discuss when we come 
to talk of road-riding as a separate matter. 

The high-school has been of inestimable use in the past ; 
to-day, when we think of nothing but athletics, its uses 
are not so apparent — to the athletic rider. Although it 
can be theoretically demonstrated that a school -rider on. 
a school- horse ought to do anything and everything bet- 
ter than any one else, the truth is that he does not. Given 
the perfect rider and the perfect horse, and he would, no 
doubt, do so ; but no horse or rider ever is perfect. It is 



, 



OIL AND WATER 



185 



like a republican form of government — perfect in theory, 
but mighty hard to make as perfect in practice with a 
somewhat mixed population; and in the hunting- field it 
is, even to an expert, practically impossible to ride on the 
delicate school -rein. On the polo -ground it might per- 
haps be done. A hunter or a polo -pony must not mind 
frequent and sometimes severe twitches on the mouth ; 
but twitches, unless your bit is very light, ruin the school- 
horse. It will not do to forget that each occupies a field 
by itself, and that art and the sports can hardly mix : they 
are as unlike as oil and w 7 ater. 

Perhaps, to-day, the best uses for school - riding are in 
winter, when, on days too disagreeable to be out with sat- 



I // 




i i 



^ii^s- > 



ivs^;. is i m^^W^"^^- - 



§St>- 




CROUPADE 



186 "'F0' DE WAR" 

isfaction, one may ride in a manege to the manifest gain 
of man and horse ; or, in the extreme summer heat, the 
well- ventilated school ring is not to be despised. 

I wonder, en passant, whether I am living too much in 
the past. It is the weakness of — shall I say middle age ? 
I often feel like the old darky who was modestly stand- 
ing beside a visitor to the " family " on the porch of the 
old plantation homestead in Virginia one fine bright night 
when Luna was out in her full majesty. " Isn't that a 
fine moon, Uncle Joe ?" said the stranger. " Yes," slowly 
assented the ancient, now somewhat threadbare servitor, 
" dat am, fo' shure, a mighty fine moon, Massa Temple, 
but yo' orter seen dat moon 'fo' de war !" Many a thing 
seems to have lost a part of its ante-helium flavor in these 
later days. Draw the rein on me if I offend too much — 
or, better still, be tolerant. 






XXXII 

The chief value of school methods lies in the application 
of the simplest of them to plain road-ricling. The term 
" saddle-horse " threatens to be lost. Any man who owns 
a horse which will allow itself to be ridden, will quietly 
walk and trot along the road more or less easily, and has 
endurance and good - temper, says that he has a saddle- 
horse, and really thinks so. Every second man will tell 
you he owns " the best saddle-horse in the State." The 
hunting-man calls his hunter a saddle-horse ; the scrubbiest 
polo -pony with airy sort of manners is so dubbed, and 
nearly every carriage-horse, too. Now this is all wrong ; 
the saddle - horse is a creature and a creation per se ; he 
must be bred and trained as such. Not that it does him 
any harm to work in light harness now and then — all my 
saddle -beasts do — but this must be a subsidiary thing. 
His saddle qualities must be first considered, and every- 
thing done to conserve them. 

It is in this that our friends of the Southern States ex- 
cel. They have distinct breeds of saddle-horses, which for 
generations they have been improving for this purpose 
alone, and they have made the strain as nearly perfect as 
can be. On the whole, the Southern " combined " horse, 
which, in addition to perfect saddle gaits and manners, 
will work true in harness, is the best general horse in ex- 
istence. A pair of such, well mated, are beyond price. I 
have owned a few such pairs, but they are rare, and the 
difficulty of bringing them East and acclimatiug them 
enhances their value and rarity. 



188 THE PARAGON 

What is this paragon that you call a saddle-horse ? you 
ask me. Let me tell you, but without enlarging upon his 
" points," which we all of us know and appreciate alike. 
If he moves quickly, smoothly, and true at all his gaits, he 
is all right; motion is the test. I have seen horses with 
" points" enough on the stable floor to make you fall down 
and worship them, that weren't worth a shilling a dozen 
when you got them out on the road. " The perfect 
hack," says my good friend the editor of the Sporting 
and Dramatic — -and I love to quote a thorough horseman 
— "must have a variety of excellences, such as are very 
rarely indeed found in one horse." He " bends readily 
and obediently to the rider's hand, though his neck has 
never undergone the process of suppling." True, indeed, 
but how often do you find this rare bird, whose price in the 
Old Country appears to be about two hundred guineas? 
Or how many of us can afford to buy him when found % 
It is just here that the school comes in and enables } T ou to 
buy for a quarter of that sum an average young four or 
^ye year old, and in six months of pleasure, for training 
is one of the greatest of pleasures, make him the perfect 
hack. And the veriest Philistine, presupposing intelli- 
gence, can begin with a green horse and, if he is half as 
apt at studying his manual as his nag is clever at catch- 
ing the trick of it, can educate his purchase and himself 
at the same time. 

While the price of choice horses in the big marts of- 
Kentucky — such as Lexington, Mount Sterling, or Paris— 
is to-day very high, you can still buy in the country for 
from two hundred dollars upwards a well -sired com- 
bined colt, who has been taught to " walk," or rack, canter, 
and trot, and of course to guide by the neck. I recently 
rode a beautiful three -year- old in Bath County, who was 
fifteen three, as well rounded up as most five-year-olds, 



HOW TO TEACH A COLT 189 

perfectly broken, who had as exceptional manners as he 
had beauty, and who was on trial in a friend's hands at 
one hundred and fifty dollars asking price. I have paid 
five hundred for less good ones, and would willingly give 
a thousand for a couple well -mated. Beyond simple 
training the accomplishments of the country horse will 
not extend ; it is for you to teach him. Or, if you still 
insist that a trot and canter are all that you want, you 
can for the same price, or fifty dollars more, buy in New 
York, Philadelphia, or Boston a nice moving colt, broken 
to harness, and willing to trot kindly under saddle. The 
latter will need much more to make him a saddle-horse, 
for he has had no saddle ancestry. Still it can be done. 

Where, you say, shall we learn how to teach this colt ? 
Well, now you have asked me a delicate question. But if 
a man will not cry his own wares, how can he expect 
others to advertise them for him ? I have tried to tell the 
how in a little Chat in the Saddle, named after " Patro- 
clus" and "Penelope," two capital nags of mine, still alive 
and at work, hale and hearty, at near twenty years old. 
And for fifteen years they have not skipped a day's 
work — or, rather, seen a day when they were not fully up 
to a good bit of work. If you want higher training, Col. 
Anderson's Modem Horsemanship will help you. Any 
of the Baucher manuals will do ; and there are a number 
of others. But all this is apart, for the Ad. is really not 
a paid one. 

How much must the colt learn to be worthy the name 
of "saddle-horse?" According to my standard the least 
education which will make him perfect should include : 

1. A busy walk, well up to four miles an hour. If 
your colt is naturally a slow walker — many good ones of 
trotting ancestry are — and you cannot appeal to his am- 
bition so as to encourage him into a good walk which he 



190 WHAT MUST HE KNOW? 

will maintain of his own accord, he ought to have an am- 
ble, or a rack, or a running walk. A slow walker under 
saddle is intolerable. You must have at least one loose- 
rein gait which gets you along at a minimum of four 
miles an hour. 

2. A quick, active, nimble trot — not the extended flying 
gait of the trotting track, but one which keeps his legs 
well under the horse and makes speed by quick gather. 
Many a thorough-bred with very limber fetlocks will trot 
with a long, rangy gait in the easiest manner possible to 
himself and his rider. But his other gaits will not be 
collected enough if he has too rangy an action. His in- 
heritance is long stride and quick gather, too ; but the 
former is wanted on the track, not the road. 

3. A good canter. Some people think that the faster 
the horse canters the better. This is all right for a cov- 
ert-hack, who is to take you as speedily as possible to the 
appointed place fixed for the meet, where your hunter 
will be waiting for you, fresh and able. But a saddle- 
beast's canter is properly measured by its slowness, not 
its speed. I by no means refer to some of those lazy 
brutes which can canter as slowly as they walk, and im- 
press you as being members of the vegetable rather than 
the animal kingdom. I mean that a horse, w T ho feels fresh 
enough to jump out of his skin and would prefer a sharp 
hand- gallop, shall be able to curb his ambition to your 
mood, and put all his action and elasticity into a five-mile- 
an-hour canter; that is luxury. But, you object, he is 
working a ten-mile gait for a five-mile progress. Exactly 
so. If, my brother, you go riding in order to cover dis- 
tance, English fashion, you are not doing saddle-work 
proper, according to my notion. Kemember our rule : If 
you are hunting, you must save your horse, because he has 
got a big clay's work to do ; if you are riding, even on 



"PUTTING ON AIRS" 191 

your saddle-horse, to make any considerable distance, regu- 
late } T ourself accordingly — but then you are travelling, not 
riding for pleasure. If you go out for the mere ride, it is 
for your nag to subserve your comfort, not for you to save 
his strength. Do you measure a painting by superficies 
or by execution? Is not a square foot of a Gerard Douw 
or a Hans Memling worth more than one hundred square 
feet of — well, let us say even a Rubens, after he had de- 
scended to political wall-paintings, oblivious of his work in 
Antwerp? So a saddle-horse's ability is to be measured 
by his gaits, not the distance he can go. "Would you ask 
to go for a pleasure ride on a " Captain McGown " or a 
" Nancy Hanks" because, forsooth, the one might take you 
forty miles in two hours, or the other a mile in 2.05 ? 
Speed is a corollary of the Sunday rider's problem, not 
yours and mine, dear boy, when we ride along the pretty 
suburban roads, or on the soft bridle-paths of the Park. 

I have often heard it said of a man with a well-trained 
horse that he appears to be putting on airs. But why is 
he showing off any more than the man who rides along 
with his elbows up at an angle of sixty degrees, or swing- 
ing his legs, or acting as if he were bestriding a Genesee 
County hunter, when he is atop of a three-dollar livery- 
hack ? A man who makes his horse show his paces with- 
in reason is as little to be accused of bumptiousness as the 
other; and if he were, he has a sounder reason for his van- 
ity. If your nag can canter a well - collected four -mile 
gait, with all the proud bearing which such an accom- 
plishment lends, why must you let him go an uncollected 
eight-mile gait, when the slower one is the very poetry of 
motion ? To dub this " putting on airs " is on all fours 
with the outcry against "those d literary fellers." 

4. A rack or singlefoot is not a sine qua non ; but I 
would vastly rather have a racker who could trot besides, 



192 ACCOMPLISHMENTS 

than a trotting-horse with an amble. You may not see 
the difference ; but there is one, just the same, as there is 
'twixt tweedledum and tweedledee. If, for saddle, you 
have to choose between a good singlefoot and a good trot, 
by all means take the singlefoot, unless you prefer fashion 
to comfort. Still, the trot is one of the finest of saddle 
gaits in its place ; it is out of place only when you 
use it to the exclusion of everything else ; it then becomes 
a species of treadmill. 

5. To say that a saddle-horse must guide by the neck 
is as absurd as to say that a well-educated man must 
know some grammar. Still, in these two - handed days, 
when a man cannot blow his nose, let alone assist his 
equestrienne, without losing partial control of his horse, 
the statement must be ventured. The saddle-horse's 
neck must be suppled so that, so soon as you take up the 
rein, he will give his head to your hand and keep it there. 
He must be able to execute the pirouette, i.e. move in a 
circle in either direction about one hind-foot, which shall 
not leave the ground. His hind-quarters must be sup- 
pled so that the use of the spur, or the closing of the legs 
shall bring his hind-feet under him, to collect his forces ; 
in other words, he must readily come in hand. As a se- 
quence to this he must execute the reversed pirouette 
round one of his fore-feet. He must traverse — move side- 
wise— at least a dozen steps, without effort. 

6. He must pass from any one of his gaits to any 
other at the slightest indication, and without flurry. He 
must start into the canter with either shoulder leading, or 
change lead at will when in motion. 

7. He must be able to jump handily and in cold blood 
any reasonable obstacle, say a fence or wall up to three 
feet and a half. If he will face four feet at call, he is an 
able jumper. 






CUI BONO? 193 

8. He must, with good courage and endurance, have 
perfect manners, and never sulk, get nervous or flurried, 
alone or in company, or act otherwise than as a horse 
treated with uniform kindness and firmness should act. 
His mouth must be velvet, but still capable of feeling 
your hand, and all his instincts must be keen and 
lively. 

With these accomplishments you have a " saddle-horse " 
sufficiently well trained for any ordinary purpose of pleas- 
ure ; but you have only laid the foundation for a high- 
school education. Your steed has merely got the three 
^'s — wading, nting, and nthmetic. 

To give a horse this knowledge presupposes some skill 
in the trainer ; properly to ride such a horse equal knowl- 
edge. Every one who rides habitually has time to learn 
the art to the above quoted extent ; and a horse so trained 
need by no means be so delicate that he requires an ex- 
pert to ride him. With courage, intelligence, and good 
manners, this education will only make him more tracta- 
ble and more handy in whatever place you put him. 

To do all this is by no means beyond the skill of any 
one who is really fond of horses and horsemanship. To 
him who rides merely because his doctor has confided to 
him that he has a liver, or because every one else rides, I 
would say, buy your article ready-made. 

But wherein is such a horse the better for road-riding ? 
asks our chappie with the crop and irreproachable nether 
garments. No whit, friend, unless education be better 
than ignorance. If Mother Goose satisfies you, you do 
not need Homer or Dante or Shakespeare or Goethe — and 
Heaven forefend that I should underrate Mother Goose ! 
Mind you, I have not said that a hunter or a polo-pony 
needs these accomplishments, though he would undenia- 
bly be the better for some of them. But these horses 

13 



194 THE HORSE'S ENJOYMENT 

have a definite work cut out for them ; the saddle-horse 
is merely a companion along the road. 

Each and every one of these accomplishments is dis- 
tinctly useful. A busy walk enables you to rest your 
horse frequently without either of you being bored or 
losing ground by lack of speed. The trot enables you to 
change gait and equally ease yourself and your steed's 
muscles. To change lead in the canter saves the fore-feet, 
for a horse which always leads on one foot runs danger 
of going lame by-and-by. It also saves the houghs. The 
rack is the easiest of all paces, and is, par excellence, a hot 
weather gait, when a trot is all but impossible except to a 
man in training. To shift the fore -quarters quickly means 
handiness in turning and less danger of tripping a horse up ; 
and the same applies to the shifting of the hind-quarters. 
Moreover, without the latter, how can you place your 
horse where you want him, as to open a gate, or to keep 
your place in a group of riders ? The utility of the rest 
goes without saying, and this is but a little of the practi- 
cal side; while the pleasure of it all is hard to be ex- 
plained to a man who has not been through it, or to a 
horse which is not thus trained. For the horse, be it 
said, is as keen in his enjoyment of it all as the man ; I 
sometimes think more keen than most men. 

To whatever horse -owner there may be who cannot 
hunt or play polo or breed, or who has not a long enough 
purse to own racers, let me prescribe the study of pure 
saddle -work; he will be rewarded a hundredfold for his 
experiment. And this especially if he is getting on in 
years, and wants a quiet rather than a boisterous pleasure. 

To revert to the text, though we seem to have reached 
a sort of Fourteen thly : it is not to be wondered at that 
we Americans have sought our models in the Old Country. 
It is the English who have taught us nearly all our sports. 



AMERICANISM 195 

Anglomania in its proper sense is as excellent as in its 
forced sense it is absurd. If to learn from the Briton 
how to race or hunt or play polo be Anglomania, let us 
all be inoculated for the disease, and speedily. If to 
swear by everything English, from togs to manners, just 
because it is English, be Anglomania, the sooner we are 
rid of it the better. The word must be advisedly used. 
In its better sense, we are all Anglomaniacs who are not 
sick with Anglophobia, a much worse type of the disease. 
But give Americanism a chance, especially in horseman- 
ship. We have no cause to be ashamed of what we have 
in horses, nor of what we can do in the saddle. And a 
judicious choice in the field and on the road of what is 
best at home and abroad ought to put us in equestrianism, 
if not where we stand in yachting, at least on a level high 
enough to satisfy the most critical. 



XXXIII 

Come with me across the ocean. If thou fearest the 
sickness of the sea, friend, come with me but in spirit, for 
old Neptune hath ordained that the particular part of his 
domain which is the most frequently crossed, the North 
Atlantic, shall be the most constantly stormy. It is thus 
he punishes him who dares his authority by ploughing 
through his purple waters. I wonder whether the an- 
cients sacrificed to the fishes any the less for sacrificing 
to Neptune before they went aboard. However this may 
have been, libations poured out to the grizzly God of the 
Trident were assuredly less foolish than many nostrums 
against sea-sickness in our own day and generation. 

Well, here we are in England. Mother - country, all 
hail! Years have I tasted thy bounteous hospitality, 
hearty thanks have I laid at thy feet ! And as I am about 
to speak of thy horsemen, I begin by a cordial bow of 
admiration, for they are truly to be admired, in the good 
old Latin sense. 

I will but take the chair, as it were, and begin by in- 
troducing better speakers. Says my ancient comrade, 
Colonel Edward L. Anderson — of the fighting Andersons, 
and once of General Sherman's staff — in that most author- 
itative of modern series, the Britannica of sports, the Bad- 
minton Library, to wit : " In breeding horses, in rearing 
and in caring for them, in racing them and in riding them 
across country, the Englishman is easity first." To which 
I say amen. In the same volume {Riding and Polo), one 



THE INTOLERANT BRITON 197 

of the best of horsemen, sportsmen, and critics, known to 
us all as " Rapier," of the Sporting and Dramatic JVews, 
Alfred E. T. Watson — may his shadow never grow less ! — 
remarks that "an Englishman's highest ambition, apart 
from success in sport between the flags, is to ride straight 
to hounds in the manner which, causing no unnecessary 
exertion to himself or horse, enables horse and man to 
last the longest without fatigue." " The Englishman has 
no sort of desire to practise the ' high airs ' of the school. 
To him it seems an utter waste of time to induce a horse 
to piaffer, execute the Spanish trot, or perform other 
feats of school training. If he can make his horse lead 
off with either leg as he may indicate, and perhaps swing 
his croup as well as his fore-hand, the animal is looked on 
as possessing a superfluity of accomplishments." 

These two statements cover the entire case. It is true 
that the Englishman is unapproachable in his own prov- 
ince ; it is also true that he despises the high-school, and 
that he doesn't know a saddle-horse as we know him in 
the Southern States. I have interlarded so many observa- 
tions on the English method in my chat about our own 
ways, that there is scarce a word left to be said. I can- 
not overstate my unswerving fealty to the Briton's horse- 
manship as above construed, any more than I could over- 
state my affection for his frank and manly, if often 
brusque and pushing, habit the wide w r orld over. Why 
should he not, if he chooses so to do, plume himself on 
owning, if not, as we are said to do, on beating all creation? 
It is a refreshing thing to see and hear him assert it. If we 
fondly imagine we know better, and inwardly chuckle at 
his unconscious intolerance along the highways and by- 
ways of life, it does him no harm ; and surely we, too, are 
chips of the old block. British narrowness has wrought 
great things — as narrowness has everywhere. Antislavery 



198 THE BRITISH CAVALRY SEAT 

was narrowness, and yet the extremists were the men who 
roused us to the efforts which culminated in freedom to 
the slave. Too great breadth will not keep the world 
a-moving. St. Paul makes a mistake in urging content- 
ment at all seasons — at least, in the way his translators 
have quoted him. Had he himself been one of your con- 
tented men, he would scarcely have accomplished what 
he did. And the Englishman's self-contentment and self- 
assertiveness are coupled with a fine habit of putting in 
big licks, hitting straight from the shoulder, in every part 
of the world. Just what right, for example, he has to be 
here in Egypt (where I happen to be penning these lines), 
I fail to see, and yet what a change he has wrought for 
the better! The poor fellahin to-day know that their 
land will be irrigated in its due turn, and for the first 
tfme since the Sphinx was hewn from its native rock can 
gauge the tax they will have to pay. So works the 
Briton everywhere and in most mundane affairs — but this 
thing militates against just what produces the niceties of 
equitation. 

The English army officer rides well, just because he 
rides like an English gentleman. The British trooper rides 
no worse, no better, than any other regular cavalryman. 
Seat is largely an individual habit. I have seen men in 
the English cavalry, just as I have seen men in our own 
regiments, ride extreme forked-radish style, sitting bolt up- 
right on the crotch, while other men in the same troop 
would have in the saddle a regular cross-country seat, 
barring the fact that their toes were in the stirrups instead 
of riding " home." 

The only difference I have ever been able to perceive 
between our own and the British cavalry seat is, as be- 
fore stated, that our men are wont to depress their heels 
a trifle less, riding in a more natural, less drill- stiffened 



THE HORSE GUARDS 199 

way. The Horse Guards ride with particularly long stir- 
rups, though part of the appearance of this is due to their 
superabundance of leg. 

But, good or bad, the Briton has enough to be proud 
of ; let us leave him alone in his glory. 



XXXIY 

Would that the times still were when one might cross 
the Channel dry-shod ! Why did the sea ever encroach 
on that invaluable neck of dry land ? If there is an un- 
certainty of travel in any part of the commonly trotted 
universe, it is that nasty bit of water. Nasty is said not to 
be a nice word, but it literally describes man and the ele- 
ments on the Channel. Yet if we Americans, easily first in 
travelling conveniences, should have that water between our 
two biggest cities (not to mention the two capitals of the 
world), we would put a ferry there which would make the 
transit a pleasure in lieu of a dread. The Club train runs 
from London with its Qve millions of souls to Paris with 
half the number once a day, costs about six cents a mile, 
and is rather a petty affair for the fuss they make over it. 
From little provincial Boston, with its scant half-million 
population, you have some twenty trains a day, giving 
you more speed, more comfort, and vastly more elegance 
for two and a half cents a mile, and you are not limited 
to a paltry sixty pounds of impedimenta, or atrociously 
taxed if your wife happens to have brought along a few 
extra Saratogas to swell the weight. Our baggage is 
rarely subjected to delays or impost ; English luggage is 
not so lucky. It takes thirty -eight hours to run from 
Paris to Kome, some eleven hundred miles, if my memory 
serves me ; and you practically have no comfort whatever 
for the five cents a mile you pay. You run from New 
York to Chicago, nearly the same distance, in twenty -two 



SAUMUR RIDING 201 

hours or less, at half the cost, and in what luxury ! How 
distinctly we lead in travelling, despite the occasional su- 
perciliousness of the Pullman nigger ! 

"Where'er I roam, whatever lands I see, 
My heart, un travelled, fondly turns to thee," 

and I might add, my body does too, if travelling is to be 
synonymous with comfort. 

But let us come to the Frenchman. It used to be said 
that there were many Church people who would not sub- 
scribe to the Thirty-nine Articles, but who had an implicit 
faith in the Forty Thieves ; and it is a sort of fortieth 
article to every dweller in the bright little, tight little 
island that Johnny Crapaud cannot ride. Bat he can. 
In some respects, such as fine training and school-riding, 
he is vastly the Briton's superior. And now that he has 
taken a bad form of the international disease yclept Anglo- 
mania, and has begun to do some rough-and-tumble riding, 
he may prove still more of a rival to his neighbor across 
La Manche. The French military man rides well. At 
Saumur the equestrian education is good. I have seen a 
number of Saumur cadets riding over a decentish obstacle. 
They all showed excellent skill, though no one can judge 
from drill-ground or manege riding how a man might ride 
to hounds — if the latter is to be made the ultimate test, as 
it should not be. For the purpose for which the Saumur 
training is intended there is a sufficiency of leaping. 
There are other things in cavalry drill, or in the prepara- 
tion of an officer for staff service, besides jumping obsta- 
cles, though it is hard to convince a Briton of it. 

They have recently been taking riding photographs at 
Saumur, which are published in a series, d la Muybridge, 
but on a very limited scale. I was shown photographs of 
a horse in the successive positions of the trot and canter 




HOW TO DO IT 



as an unusual thing ; and when I said that the University 
of Pennsylvania had taken all animals, from men to birds. 
in motion, and had published a series of plates containing 
thirty thousand phototypes, I was stared at politely but 
reproachfully and incredulously. We are given credit for 
very little abroad. The simplest thing you tell a foreigner 
runs the risk of being looked at as a gross exaggeration. 
I have had intelligent people gaze at me as if I had been 
spinning a monumental yarn, to put it mildly, because, e.g., 
I told them that Pittsburg had for years been lighted and 
heated and had its factories driven by natural gas, or that 
petroleum was transported by pipe-lines, over hill and dale, 
from the oil-fields, several hundred miles, to the ocean. 

When I was a small boy, the elevator in the Continental 
Hotel in Philadelphia was already running, and it was 



"WONDERFUL BRITONS!" 203 

soon followed by elevators all over the country. After a 
generation or so the English caught on to the idea and 
began to put in timid little things of the same genus, but 
by no means of the same species, and called them Lifts. 
By-and-by the people on the Continent saw the point and 
put in a few still more timorous dcenseurs : "Etonnants, 
ces Anglais ! Quelle invention ! Voila qui vaut la peine !" 
In 1854, if I remember right, George Francis Train put a 
horse-railroad on the Bays water Road from the Marble 
Arch to Kensington Gate. I rode on the first car. The 
scheme failed, because it was not legally protected, and 
the cabbies were down on it and could not be prevented 
from driving at a walk on the track ahead of the cars. 
Horse-railroads were then as old as the hills in America. 
Again, after the lapse of half a generation, the English 
caught on and started what they improperly called trams ; 
and later the simple Continental folk followed suit with 
their Tranvays. Not a suspicion that we Americans had 
ever had elevators or horse-railroads ; oh no, it was the 
original, the wonderful, the veritable English lift and 
tram — " Donnerwetter, was f iir Kerle, die Englander ! — 
and so forth, and so on. 

The French civilian is not, as a rule, as good a horseman 
as the " militaire." There are many high -school riders 
who are masters of the art. But there is no special sport 
in which to shake the average Frenchman into the saddle, 
unless it be those which by imitation he has taken from 
Albion, just as we have done at home; and these can be, 
or are, pursued but in a few places. As a rule, the French 
civilian impresses you as rather finicky in his style. When 
he rides in the Bois de Boulogne there is a lack of freedom 
in his equitation, which is well characterized by the con- 
stant use of the bit rather than the bridoon. And what- 
ever national method he may have had in the days of 



204 THE JAM OF JAMNUGGER 

Baucher, or ought since to have built up on the foundation 
laid by this great man, seems to have been swallowed up 
in his craze for matters English. In dress and horse rig 
and seat he closely follows the Briton, and then forsooth 
rides all day long on the curb, as the Briton never would 
do. This incompleteness makes me think of the portrait 
of the Jam of Jamnugger, which I possess, dressed in all 
the magnificence of a Hindoo maharajah, except for his 
feet, which are incased in a pair of three-dollar Douglas 
shoes! Please note that this also is not a paid Ad., 
though it ought to be. In many matters equine the 
French are as admirable as in their own specialty, the 
Percheron ; but not so in riding. And yet, as was ob- 
served long ago, they are horsy enough to call their 
mothers mares and dub their daughters fillies. 

The French have done one thing which we must not 
forget. The first man who showed the world that intelli- 
gent kindness was the real secret of horse breaking and 
training was the Frenchman Baucher. Up to his day 
colts had been broken by cruel methods, and were never 
more than half trained. The tempers of the majority 
were irretrievably ruined. Baucher taught an entirely 
new system, and the whole world has benefited by it. 
Even English breakers, though they scorn his higher edu- 
cation, unwittingly make use of the devices he intro- 
duced. 

It has, however, been reserved for Governor Leland Stan- 
ford's farm at Palo Alto to perfect the methods of kind- 
ness. The men on the place are forbidden to speak in an 
angry tone to a colt ; a man who should swear at or strike 
one would be instantly discharged. From the time the 
foal is born, he is habituated to the presence and the gen- 
tling of man, and is taught that he receives nothing but 
kindness and favors at his hands. One rule is enforced : 



PALO ALTO 205 

when the foal or colt is near his groom or his master, he 
must never indulge in play, but stand quiet and allow him- 
self to be petted or handled in auy fashion. In the pad- 
dock he may fool to the top of his bent ; but never in the 
society of man. As a result the colt does not have to be 
broken, in our sense of the word ; he is ready to be hitched 
up and driven when he is old enough to work. The sys- 
tem is perfection. 



XXXV 

What shall be said of the German rider ? That, within 
certain limits of his own, and these are practically con- 
fined to cavalry methods, the German rides well, no one 
can deny. A squadron, or a regiment, or a brigade of 
cavalry moves in an irreproachable manner; the troops 
drill like automata ; their conduct in the field is worthy of 
their history ; but when you see the men by themselves 
they do not always impress you as easy at their work. It 
may safely be assumed that the Germans know what they 
are about ; and that they can organize and drill cavalry 
has been sufficiently demonstrated. Our comment can 
extend no further than the individual. 

When, as a boy, I was in Prussia, there was nothing 
more revolting to the sense of propriety of the average 
citizen than matters English; now there is a strong pro- 
clivity to the international disease. On a number of oc- 
casions in my youth I visited school friends at their homes 
in the country, and there found a deal of excellent riding. 
In those days German was the home language, but French 
was universally employed in social intercourse, and the 
mother-tongue was interlarded with Gallic phrases. We 
would be comfortably talking German, perhaps even in- 
dulging in the old Berlin patois, which included in its 
vocabulary the "Ne!" or the soft pronunciation of "g," 
which gave rise to the phrase " Eene jute jebratene Jans 
ist eene jute Jabe Jottes," when a runaway ring at the 
bell would startle all of us out of, or rather into, our pro- 



GERMAN LEAPING 207 

priety, and we would begin to chatter French as glibly as, 
if not with the brogue of, denizens of Paris — for it might 
be company. What in those Gallo-Teutonic days they 
used to call the Parforce Jagd was stag or boar hunting 
in the saddle, during which you were compelled to ride 
over all kinds of country, sometimes stiff enough. This 
was not done at racing pace, nor were the obstacles as 
bad as the ox-fences in the Midland counties ; but still it 
was fairish sport, and the game was better worth having 
than Keynard's brush or pads, for the pack is wont to de- 
vour Keynard, while we used to eat the stag or boar (when 
we got him) at the hunt-dinner in the evening, or a day or 
two later when he had got more tender. The run was 
not infrequently through heavy timber, where there were 
many fallen trees to clear, and a deal of thicket to get 
through ; and I have seen excellent horsemanship in such 
a hunt. Horsemanship is relative. Because Buffalo Bill 
or Sotnik Dmitri Peshkof could not keep in the same field 
with the hounds over a difficult country is no proof that 
either falls short of being one of the best of horsemen. 

I think the German military rider is a trifle stiff ; and 
I do not like the way the soldier is taught his leaping ex- 
ercises. It is rather absurd to make so much account of 
jumping ; but the world is agog on the subject, and he 
that leapeth a six-foot fence is greater than he that taketh 
a city. Ko horse in cold blood leaps willingly with any- 
thing but an easy bit; and yet the German soldier is 
taught to use his curb exclusively. The obstacle the en- 
listed man leaps at squad-drill is a small affair, over which 
the horse could almost step if he tried hard, and of course 
the commonest troop horse clears it easily. But I have 
never seen a German soldier sit down on his horse at even 
such a leap ; he does not curl his sitting-bones under him, 
as the phrase runs, but relies on the stirrups and goes out 



208 THE NEGRO RIDER 

of his saddle at a two-foot hurdle. Sometimes a German 
soldier riding at a hurdle is the very type of how not to 
do it. 

There is no man who sits down on his horse more ad- 
mirably than the negro. He seems to settle into his seat 
in much the same limber way he dances a break-down. 
While his muscles are all in readiness to grip his horse or 
saddle, his joints are loose and he gets nearer to his mount 
than almost any man I know. While he may not always 
be discreet in his management of a horse, he is otherwise 
a capital example for the ramrod soldier to imitate ; and 
when a darky is a good horseman he is apt to be ahead of 
his white competitor. He and the horse invariably under- 
stand each other. I have had negro grooms who would 
keep the paces of my saddle-horses pure and distinct, and 
whom in my absence I would trust to ride them month in, 
month out, when I would not let one of my white grooms 
— certainly no English groom I ever knew — get astride 
one, even to ride him to the blacksmith, 

What I have said above is not all there is to German 
leaping. The cavalry often goes at an obstacle by troops ; 
and horses, even on the curb, will leap vastly freer in 
company than singly. So far as manoeuvres go one can 
scarcely criticise the Germans, and their squadron -drill 
includes riding over a wall and ditch. The men rarely 
lose than seats, and this leaves little to be said. It is 
the individual soldier who does not at all times impress 
us so favorably. I am not speaking of the officers ; as a 
class they ride well, and I have known many splendid 
horsemen among them. 

The German civilian rides d la militaire ; every man 
has served his time. There is a certain set fashion 
throughout the German Empire in every phase of life. 
Things are conducted within lines which forbid their ex- 



THE GERMAN TYPE 



209 



pansion into types. In America, in the Orient, you may 
find numberless types, the pattern of each of which is its 
own individuality ; but ever present organization, in civil 
and military matters alike, all through the German struct- 
ure, forbids novelty. All things are cast in one mould ; 
and there may be said to be but one type of horseman. 







HOW NOT TO DO IT 



XXXYI 

I fear we may not be permitted to wander together 
all over Europe. We must ride to orders, and seek 
climes more full of oddities in horsemanship. There is not 
much difference, after all, between any of the riders of the 
great military powers, barring Russia. As in Germany, 
they all pattern on the same model, and produce, with 
some questions of degree, about the same horsemen. If 
Austria could claim that her people were fit followers of 
their gallant Empress, who is noted as one of the best 
riders who ever led the field over Warwickshire, they 
would be distinctly at the top of all the horsemen of Eu- 
rope ; but Her Majesty is a clear exception to every rule 
of royalty. She is peerless in the side-saddle. The Austro- 
Hungarians, in the recent Berlin -Vienna ride, were ready 
victors, and received from the German Emperor the com- 
pliment of being called the best cavalry in Europe — a tru- 
ism partly due to their pattern being at hand in the admi- 
rable light horse of their eastern dominions, which they 
have cleverly imitated. The Russians have, in a similar 
manner, patterned to a certain extent on the Cossack ; 
but of him we shall treat when we come to the Oriental, 
whose ways he possesses more than those of the European. 

The Italians present nothing peculiar in their equitation. 
They are cast in the same military mould as the rest of 
nations, though their method is to-day somewhat marred 
by the English saddle and an imperfect imitation of the 
English seat; and these are, I deem it, inapplicable to cav- 



OURS VS. FOREIGN CAVALRY 211 

airy riding of the best order — a point on which I have 
elsewhere dilated. 

With reference to army officers in Europe, I must say 
that I have always found among them not only admirable 
riders, but a strong spirit of appreciation of what is best in 
horsemanship as well. It may be assumed as an axiom 
that what they know and what they do is best fitted to 
what their respective military duties may be. To say 
that our own army officers could readily learn to do their 
work, and that they would naturally have much more to 
learn in order to succeed on our peculiar terrain and under 
our difficult conditions, while it may be praise to the 
adaptiveness of our men, is by no means a discredit to 
those whose duties savor as much of the barracks and 
drill-ground as the duties of our army do of what is tech- 
nically known as partisan warfare. 



XXXVII 

Whoso, when he reaches the home of the Moor or the 
Bedouin, or stands where, scorning to live under a roof, 
the Arab of the desert pitches his camel's-hair tent and 
lazes away a profitless existence, eating his bread in the 
sweat, not of his own brow, but of that of his slaving 
wives and daughters ; where the date-palm and the olive- 
tree — or at need the Barbary fig — stand between the list- 
less son of the prophet and annual starvation ; where man 
is literally the dust of the field, and mixes with his native 
sod as constantly during life as after death ; where woman 
has no soul, and is but a crude promise of the houri of the 
hoped-for paradise ; where every instinct points to indo- 
lence, and where man has not bettered his condition one 
jot for fifty generations ; whoso, because he is among 
Arabs, fondly imagines that he will find himself among 
better horses than surround him at home, is doomed to 
grievous disappointment. Good horse-flesh is as rare on 
the Arabian desert as it is in England or America. There 
are more high-grade horses in Kentucky to-day per thou- 
sand of population than the first home of the ancestor 
of all blooded stock has ever boasted. A faultless steed is 
a pearl of great price ; it is difficult to be found ; and like 
the scriptural jewel, a man must often sell all that he hath 
to buy it. 

" Where are the Arabian horses?" you ask, on reaching 
Morocco or Algeria. " Those are Arabians, pure blood," 
comes the answer, with a gesture towards some diminutive 



ORIGIN OF GOOD HORSES 213 

equine specimens, for all the world like broncos. " But 
the proud, gentle, high-spirited, well-mannered, intelligent, 
beautiful Arabians, of which we have from youth up 
heard— which we have come, lo ! these many thousand 
weary miles to worship?" "Ah, you must go to the 
desert for those !" You accordingly journey to the edge 
of the desert, perhaps Biskra way, or perchance over hill 
and dale of never-ending golden sands to the first oasis 
out beyond the limits where white men congregate ; but, 
alas ! it is always a sheik or a caliph farther on, at the 
next oasis, or the next, who has the perfect animal your 
eye longs to feast upon. Or else, as ill-luck will have it, 
he has just started with his pet, his choicest mare, the 
apple of his eye, on a visit to the second cousin of his 
grandmother, a hundred leagues away. I have, I believe, 
just missed the most peerless steed of the Orient some 
forty times save one. 

The reason is not far to seek. Good horses come solely 
from selection and breeding. But, you will object, there 
was no breeding to produce the bronco, of whose wonder- 
ful qualities you have heretofore told us. On the con- 
trary, there was natural selection of the very best. Start- 
ing with pure blood — i.e., the Moorish horses carried by the 
Spaniards to America, and there, fugitive or abandoned, 
the survival of those fittest to flee from wolves or to search 
good pasture and water over immense stretches of prairie 
land, bred the hardiest of stock. Man, with the utmost 
care and skill, could in a certain sense scarcely have done 
better by the race in all except beauty. On the other 
hand, starting from the same stock, let man overwork and 
underfeed the horse and neglect his breeding, and in a few 
generations the noblest race will degenerate. It is just 
this which has taken place in almost all the countries 
which ought to possess the very highest grade of horse- 

14* 



214 KINDS OF ARABS 

flesh. We are wont to associate an Arab with the idea of 
love for and gentle treatment of his steed ; on the con- 
trary, it is less than one in a hundred Arabs who treats his 
horse with intelligence or with kindness, and therefore it 
is less than one in a hundred which becomes anything but 
a commonplace beast of burden. 

There are two kinds of Arab tribes : first, those dwelling 
in the cities, subsisting by the lower trades and living from 
hand to mouth in crowded filth, and those dwelling in 
the lesser communities, such as small towns and villages, 
earning a precarious livelihood by a crude sort of agricult- 
ure or by raising dates or olives, and living in mud-walled 
huts roofed with thatch, sod, or tile ; second, the tent- 
dwellers, who rove from place to place and are purely a 
pastoral people, subsisting on the yield of their flocks and 
herds and the breeding and sale of the camel, horse, and ass. 
Among the first, when they have any, as is rare enough, 
the horse has become a sumpter animal, a means of trans- 
portation or an item in husbandry, and has, as a matter 
of course, fallen from his high estate. Among the latter 
he has kept some of his better qualities ; among some of 
the wealthy he has retained all his attributes. It goes 
without saying that in the cities it is the rich who own 
the finest stock; on the desert this is not always true. 
Unless ground into the very dust by poverty, many a man 
who owns no other earthly possessions may have as fine a 
mare as the noblest sheik ; and he will starve his own flesh 
and blood to keep her sleek and hearty. In fact, it is she 
whose foal will annually fill the empty exchequer. 

An Arab, meaning a tent-dweller, for in an equine sense 
the town-dweller is no Arab, loves first and above all his 
mare. No need to recite the oft-sung affection he will 
lavish upon her, the care he will take of his glossy favor- 
ite, for whose preservation he will gladly pinch his own 



LOVES OF THE ARABS 215 

belly. Next to his steed he loves his fire-arm. This, po- 
etically speaking, ought to be a six-foot, gold and jade in- 
laid, muzzle-loading horror of a matchlock, which would 
kick any man but an Arab flat on his back at every shot ; 
but actually, in Algeria and Tunis, when he lives near a 
city and is allowed by the French authorities to own one 
at all, it is rather more apt to be a modern English breach- 
loader of approved pattern, with plenty of ammunition 
handy. You must fly from the busy haunts of men in 
these days of ours to find the ancient matchlock. Next 
to his fire-arm the Arab loves his oldest son, in whom he 
really harbors a worthy pride. Last comes his wife — or 
one of his wives. If he is a man by nature faithful, his 
first w r ife may always remain his favorite ; if inconstant, it 
will be his last. Daughters do not even count; I mean 
the Arab scarcely takes the trouble to count them, unless 
in so far as they can minister to his comfort, dietetic or 
otherwise. Until some neighbor comes along and proposes 
to marry, in other words to make a still worse slave of 
one of them, she is only a chattel, a soulless thing. And 
yet she is said to be a pretty, amiable, helpful being ; said 
to be, for no one by any hap casts his eye on one worth 
seeing. I have made every effort, within and without the 
bounds of Arab propriety, I might say safety, to investi- 
gate the Arabian maiden — but to no avail. This disre- 
gard of women, be it said to their honor, does not always 
apply to the wilder, but more intelligent, independent, and 
manly Bedouin of the Syrian and Arabian deserts. But 
of this when w T e get so far upon our travels. 

Let me premise, in this screed anent the horses on the 
south and east of the Mediterranean basin, that it is not 
my purpose to descant solely upon the choice steeds which 
may be classed as Arabians. This is the burden of the 
song of nearly all who tell us of the horse of the Orient. 



216 HIGH-TYPE HORSES 

The Anazeh mares are claimed by the best judges to be 
the only royal stock of the eldest branch ; bat this infor- 
mation does one no good ; for by no chance whatsoever 
does a Frank ever come within a distance of winning such 
a prize. In America, a long purse will buy a " Sunol" or 
an " Arion," a " St. Julien " or a " Nancy Hanks ;" but his 
Imperial Majesty the Sultan himself has neither money nor 
wit nor power to purchase or take one of the best or even 
one of the second best Anazeh mares. They are, so far as 
we are concerned, out of the race. I purpose to tell you of 
the average Arabian, the horse that a Frank may buy ; 
one who is of as good lineage as the animal a well-to-do 
citizen rides in our part of the world. Few of us throw our 
legs across a pure descendant of " Lexington, 1 ' or even of 
" Justin Morgan," and it seems to me that there is more 
interest in the steed of every day than in the mystery sur- 
rounding the horse one sees as rarely as we see a Derby 
winner; a horse we must pursue as one does the ignis 
fatims, and who is equally evanescent. 

The true Arab's undoubted love for his steed has kept 
up, in some few places over the entire area where the Ara- 
bian horse flourishes, a more or less pure strain of the 
wonderful old stock. The wealthy or princely have no 
doubt improved on the original, but not in any great 
measure ; certainly not by any means as we Anglo-Saxons 
have done. The heritage of the Arabian or the Barb — 
there is only a difference in nomenclature and habitat be- 
tween them; they are otherwise, barring some equine 
points, very nearly the same animal — is the power of 
transmitting his qualities in undiminished measure to his 
offspring, and the power of extraordinary endurance at 
speed. What the latter means I can only explain illustra- 
tively. It is not distance that kills, but speed. Any de- 
cent horse can go thirty miles a day with a reasonable 



HERITAGE OF ARABIAN 217 

load over good roads at a walk, and keep on doing it day 
in day out for years, fat and hearty No horse that was 
ever foaled could run or trot, at the top of his speed (say 
a 1.42 or a 2.15 gait), three one-mile dashes every day for 
a season without breaking down. In other words, at 
speed a horse cannot do one-tenth of the distance he can 
at a slow gait. It is only the occasional coarse-bred horse 
who has speed ; and when one has it, still he cannot stay 
at speed. But this is just what the old desert blood ena- 
bles a horse to do ; and it is this wonderful quality which, 
through the English thorough-bred, we have got at home 
in our runners and trotters and saddle-beasts, and by a 
principle of natural selection in the bronco. And this same 
quality we Occidentals, by more intelligent and careful 
breeding and training and racing than the horse has ever 
undergone elsewhere, may fairly claim to have improved. 



XXXVIII 

Where this wonderful creature, the Arabian horse, 
originally came from will never be knoAvn. It seems to 
have been shown by geologists that remains of the horse 
are found in older strata, or associated with more ancient 
races of men, in Europe than in any part of Asia. Whether 
this .proves that the horse had his origin in Europe, or 
merely that research has been pushed further on Euro- 
pean soil than it has been in Asia, it is not within our 
province to inquire. So far as concerns good equine stock 
— i.e., the horses impregnated more or less by thorough 
blood — we need go no further back than what we know of 
them in the Syrian or Arabian desert ; the horses of the 
Libyan desert came from these ; the Spanish horses came 
from the Libyan desert, and our broncos came from the 
Spanish ; while the English thorough-bred has descended 
from sires of either the one or the other, imported into 
England under the Stuarts. Whatever the history of the 
horse from a geological stand-point, it is not worth while 
to search beyond what we can glean from the early history 
of the steed of the Bedouin. In some manner the Ara- 
bian came of a common native race of horses which man 
had intelligence and patience enough to seek to improve 
by breeding them in a congenial climate for many genera- 
tions ; or rather he came of a common strain which first 
got improved because the man of the desert found his 
profit and his safety in the superior speed and endurance 
of his steeds, and naturally bred from these. This is the 
summary of all we know. 



ORIGIN OF BARBS 219 

In what is modern Algeria, the Mauretania of the Ro- 
mans, where Carthage was a great city long before dis- 
dainful Remus hopped over Romulus's wall, there is little 
doubt that the nimble, intelligent runt of a steppes pony, 
which furnished the mounts for the Numidian cavalry 
that later all but destroyed Rome in the Second Punic 
War, which had no bridle but was guided by a stick or by 
the legs and voice, and whose endurance knew no bounds, 
was the ancestor of the native horse of to-day. The same 
thing applies to Morocco. There were other similar breeds 
in other parts of the East, some of which had been earlier 
perfected ; but the horse of the Algerian country no doubt 
descended from the Numidian pony as he is known in his- 
tory. The steppes horse, of whatever country, is generally 
a stayer and a good progenitor. All others get weeded 
out from the herds by wild animals or by scant forage. 
Just as the modern thorough -bred comes of the native 
British mares impregnated by Barb or Arabian sires, so 
with the Numidian pony. Upon this animal an impress 
must have been made from time to time by importations 
of markedly good individuals from farther east, for the 
horse, like civilization, has uniformly travelled westward, 
until now, the Californian claims, it has reached its high- 
est development on the Pacific slope; but when the French 
conquered Algeria in 1830 they found the country horse 
on a decidedly low level. That the Barb had theretofore 
been a noble creature is sufficiently shown by the history 
of the Moors in Spain ; but neglect had sapped his quality. 

There was not much done by the French for some time 
to improve the stock, but later the best grade of stallions 
were bought by the Government for public use ; a num- 
ber of fine ones were purchased from the trans -Jordan 
Bedouins of Syria; breeding for the army was carefully 
attended to, and now the cavalry of the entire Nineteenth 



220 ALGERIAN HORSE 

Corps d'Armee is mounted on what may be called Arabian 
horses, while numbers go to France. The corps has about 
fifteen thousand such animals. Only stallions are used. 
Mares out on the desert are kept for breeding ; within the 
limits of civilization the few there are have been put to 
work in the fields. One almost never sees a gelding. 

The Algerian horse may in every sense be highly com- 
mended. He is docile from inherited kind treatment, is 
readily broken, and is, as a rule, without tricks. He has the 
kind eye and gentle manner of the Barb, a small but not 
very bony head, a short, light, but round barrel and perfect 
legs and feet. He is often leggy, but has good lung-power. 
He has not quite enough body to suit my ideas. That 
roundness which we all like behind the girths, and which 
we consider essential to good qualities of endurance, does 
not often exist. An old-fashioned horseman would say 
that, to all appearances, he did not carry his feed well. 
Perhaps he is not fed as much hay as our stock has to have 
for mere warmth. He is neat-turned and averages good- 
looking, but he does not carry an extra -high head, and 
rarely carries a decent tail. They hog his mane not in- 
frequently, a habit which is generally bred of Anglomania 
among the French, though it is not unknown even among 
the Bedouins of the desert. The drawing-book or lady's- 
album Arabian one may go many a Sabbath-day's journey 
to find — and then fail to find him. There do exist Ara- 
bians with the wonderful head, speaking eye, nervous 
ear, teacup muzzle, delicate throttle, powerful shoulder, 
wrought steel legs, high croup, and tail a poem ; but they 
are very much like black pearls ; we know that there exist 
such jewels, we occasionally see one in Tiffany's or on the 
neck of some decolletee lady, but they are beyond our 
reach. Two Arabians were sent over to General Grant as 
a present. They were good specimens, but not the very 




FRENCH ALGERIAN CAVALRYMAN ON BARB 



SHOW HORSES 223 

best of their kind, according to the Anazeh standard. 
Some French officers in Algeria have picked up fine Ara- 
bians from sheiks in the desert, for which they have paid, 
I was told, from two thousand francs and upwards — a 
cheap enough price in any event, for, like trotters in the 
2.20 class, the number of good ones is extremely limited. 
You or I would have to pay thrice the sum. 

One thing you will be very sure to find in every part of 
the world, and that is that work and show do not go to- 
gether — your every-day utility-horse does not carry about 
his patent of nobility with him, however high-bred he may 
be. He proves his lineage by what he can do, not by his 
simple looks. If you want to have a show horse you 
must keep him for show. You will find him standing in 
every part of the country, from Palo Alto to Bangor, in 
all of our Eastern racing-stables, in every great breeding 
establishment at home or abroad. He bears his pedigree 
in his fervid eye, his grand arched crest, his perfect form, 
his noble bearing, his high switching tail, and his bold, 
free step. He points to the performances of his get to 
prove what he himself might accomplish, and often to a 
past record as fine as theirs. The show horse is not the 
worker, nor is he to be easily found, even in Arabia. And 
I doubt whether the entire area of the Libyan and Syrian 
deserts boasts as splendid a specimen of horse-flesh as — 
say old " Longfellow " or " Electioneer." 



XXXIX 

The Algerian cavalry horse is a very attractive fellow, 
lie stands from fourteen and a half to fifteen and a half 
hands, not often higher ; weighs, as I gauge him, eight to 
nine hundred pounds — though they claim that he actually 
weighs one-fifth less than this — and is able to carry his 
man with sixty pounds of baggage, say two hundred and 
ten to twenty pounds in all, a strong day's journey and re- 
peat. I have been unable to find good proof of many won- 
derful performances, such as our cavalry on the plains with 
American horses, or cowboys on broncos often enougli 
exhibit ; but there is not the same call for exceptional 
performances in Algeria ; and if one were to believe the 
Arab when he is boasting of his pet's ability to go, one 
would set the average Arabian down as equal to a trifle 
more than a Baldwin locomotive. Great tests of distance 
and speed have to be called out by trying circumstances ; 
they are rarely needed among a people to whom time is 
absolutely nothing. 

More can be told about camels. There is one desert 
postal route that I heard of in Algeria, but that, though I 
have no reason to doubt its accuracy, I cannot vouch for, 
which a camel covers between sunup and sundown, one 
hundred and seventy-five kilometres or one hundred and 
eight miles, and back again next day, month in month out, 
carrying not exceeding two hundred and fifty pounds, or 
half its full load. I have found but one record of what I 
call great work by horses. About eighty miles a day, act- 




CAVALRY LEAPING DRILL IN ALGERIA 



ually measured, is quoted as very great going — to pay no 
heed to manifest exaggerations. This distance is in truth 
excellent, but far from great ; it has been more than dou- 
bled up on at home. One cannot, as a rule, measure the 
ground covered by the horse on the desert, for lack of 
statistics or of any sort of reliable testimony. 

It may be assumed, I suppose, that every one is permit- 
ted to prevaricate (is that the proper word?) when nar- 
rating successful tramps after fish ; but it is a curious fact 
that the larger the game the smaller the prevarication is 
apt to be. Horse talk is wont to be interlarded with 
occasional suspicious statements, or at least with state- 
ments which will bear a bit of checking off. The Arab is 
no exception to the rule ; he is quite untrustworthy when 
telling of his steed's performances. There is only one 
thing in which he is uniformly truthful, and that is pedi- 
gree. This is because he cannot hide it ; it is a matter of 
public notoriety in his tribe, and though he may cheat a 
stranger, it is futile for him to seek to impose on an Arab. 
In this pedigree matter he is forced to be more reliable 

15 



226 DISTANCE RIDING 

than our own horse-dealers. The manufacture of pedi- 
grees, when they cannot be traced in the stud-book, is an 
art much in vogue. In most American horse- markets 
there is a steady manufacture of pedigrees going on ; and 
the practice thrives because a man who is cheated is 
wont to hide the fact, of which he is heartily ashamed, 
rather than seek legal redress and get laughed at for his 
pains. This unwillingness to perform one's duty to the 
public is a distinct American failing. 

A very well-vouched-for performance of which I have 
heard in the Orient is the one already given, viz.: fifteen 
hundred kilometres, say nine hundred and fifty miles, on 
one horse in forty-five days, of which twenty-eight days' 
actual travelling — or thirty- three miles a day. This is a 
creditable ride, to be sure, but far from a noteworthy one. 
And the feat was performed, not by an Arabian, but by 
a Kurd horse, bred on a Persian dam by an Arabian sire. 
This was a single rider with a small escort. Many of our 
cavalry regiments have discounted this speed for long dis- 
tances, and groups of from six to twenty have beaten it 
out of sight. 

A very excellent performance by Arabians lias recently 
been given me by Colonel Colvile of the British Army, who 
has permitted me to quote him. " A party of Towasi 
Arabs, mounted on Egyptian cavalry horses and accom- 
panied by two hundred and fifty baggage camels carrying 
water and supplies, left Assiut, on the Nile, at 6 p.m. on 
June 28, 1884, under command of Lieut.-Coi. Colvile, 
Grenadier Guards, and Lieut. Stuart Wortby, Sixtieth 
Rifles, and arrived at Khargeh, in the Great Oasis, at 4 
p.m. on June 30th, a distance of one hundred and twenty 
miles, in forty-six hours. One long halt was made from 
11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on June 29th; and the horses being 
allowed to go their own pace, frequent short halts were 



ARABIAN IMPRESS 22 V 

made to allow the camels to catch them up. No water 
was obtainable on the way, and the horses were only 
watered once — i.e., during the long halt on the 29th. 
After fourteen hours' rest at Khargeh, the party pro- 
ceeded to Beris, distant sixty miles, which they reached 
at 2 p.m. on the 2d of July. No horses were lost. Here 
four hundred men and all the horses were left, and after- 
wards made their way to the Nile at Esneh, distant about 
one hundred and twenty miles. I am not in possession of 
any details of the march, but as the party was unaccom- 
panied by camels and no water is obtainable on the way, 
it was probably more rapid than that from the Nile to 
Khargeh." 

This march, especially in view of the want of water, is 
of oreat interest. It ranks well with some of our own 
cavalry marches, but does not quite approach the best. 

The Arabian's gait is usually pure ; you meet many 
trappy goers who have what one is apt to call a peculiarly 
Arabian style of picking up their feet, neat and rapid, but 
not too high, and very attractive. I have come across 
more shying Arabians than I expected, no more, perhaps, 
than there are with us; but a horse which is so docile 
ought not to shy at all. You see many stylish ones when 
they go out fresh or are feeling particularly well ; but I 
have never met one who showed vice or stubborn temper. 
There are some, but they are few; the Arabian seems 
easy to manage and easy to sit when putting on airs. 
Taken as a race, his manners are irreproachable. 

One finds in Algiers quite a number of Percherons at 
draught ; occasionally a mixture between Perch eron and 
Arab. Now and then a cob, stranded by some swell from 
London or Paris, disconsolately seeks his kind on the 
streets of this delightful city. A few ponies, and from 
time to time a fine English -hunter type of imported 



'228 LIKE A "MORGAN" 

horse for a heavy-weight officer or a winter resident, may 
be observed. There are many heavy French officers. 
The Frenchman has a habit of putting on fat which is 
quite noticeable, and, though small, he needs a weight- 
carrier. There are some imported carriage pairs. But as 
a rule, whether under saddle, or in the cabs, or drawing 
wagons, or harnessed to pleasure carriages, every city 
horse bears some mark of the fine old blood. Either the 
face or the throttle, or the clean leg and mule hoof, or the 
flea-bitten gray — a distinctive Arabian color — will tell the 
story. The impress is as strong as it is beautiful, and will 
always remain. 

The Morocco and Algeria type of horse is rounder than 
the type east of the Libyan desert ; he impresses }?ou as 
having a bigger barrel. Except for a few points w r hich 
are more distinguished, more blood -like in appearance 
than our own native strains, and for the fact that he 
stands with a bit more daylight under him as a rule, the 
Barb is not unlike what we call a " Morgan/' But he lacks 
the enormous girth of the latter, and for his inches will 
not weigh more than three-quarters as much. ISTor do I 
think he can boast any more grit and capacity to do a dis- 
tance and repeat ; while in speed, at any gait, I should 
put him on a distinctly lower scale than the descendants 
of old " Justin." He cannot run a heat race any better, 
and he can rarely trot a four-minute gait. When it comes 
to traction, for which the " Morgans " were always re- 
markable animals, the Arabian is simply nowhere. 




XL 

Three of the regiments of light cavalry in the French 
army in Algeria are recruited solely from the Arab popu- 
lation. The men are called Spahis, and are said to be ex- 
cellent in their place, amenable to discipline, and apt to 
prove effective within their limits when called upon. The 
Berbers, or aborigines, who were in the land prior to the 
Arab conquest, clo not appear as a distinct type in the 
army. They have been ground down by many genera- 
tions of poverty, and seem to have lost the notable old 
Punic trick of fighting. As a military material they are 
inferior. Most Arabs — all the pastoral or nomad Arabs,, 
in fact — are stanch French haters. They are held down 
with the strong hand alone. Only the exceptional Arab, 
who has given in his submission and is deemed quite 
trustworthy, is ever allowed to have powder and lead in 
his possession. All others are deprived of fire-arms and 
ammunition of every nature. But an Arab who has once 
accepted the situation, as does the Spahi who enlists, may 
be trusted, they say, implicitly. 

The Spahi retains his national dress, furbished up to 
make him feel proud. He rides in a saddle which is all 
but as bad as the one the Indian used to make with 
straight up and down pommel and cantle, and has by no 
means the latter's raison d'etre. The tree and bearings 
are long. The pommel is coarsely finished, and rises with 
scarcely a slope to about the waistband when the man 
sits down in his seat. The cantle rises almost perpendicu- 



230 THE SPAHI 

larly, and is two inches higher than the pommel, really 
above the small of the back. Saddle-cloths are used by 
the Spahi ad libitum, and woven girths and leathern fit- 
tings finish this singular saddle. The stirrup-leather 
hangs from the middle of the tree, and the foot is thrust 
way into a huge metal stirrup with a foot-piece square 
and big as a platter. A breast-strap holds the saddle in 
place for lack of ribs to keep it where it belongs, and the 
horse is bitted with a gag hung in a peculiar bridle with 
large square blinders. The Spahi's sword rides under his 
left leg, like the Mexican swell's ; his carbine he carries 
in his hand or slings from the shoulder or saddle ; he has 
revolvers in his holsters, and all his weapons are of the 
best make and pattern. 

He is quite a stunning fellow this same Spahi, with his 
turbaned head and flowing red, white-lined burnoose, his 
light-blue baggy leg-gear, dark-blue jacket, and generally 
dramatic manner. That he feels his own importance is 
manifest. His face is bronzed, his eye flashing, and his 
manner quick and decisive. He is deferential to his 
superiors, haughty to all he considers beneath him. From 
a glance at his saddle one may readily see how it is that 
he can stand so high in his stirrups as he sometimes does 
when he gallops past you. He mounts as we do, though 
one would scarcely imagine that he could get his foot up 
to his short-hung stirrup, or throw his leg across his ex- 
traordinary peaked cantle; but he mounts indifferently 
from either side. The fact that his tall-appearing horse 
averages barely fourteen-two accounts for his mounting so 
easily. The Arabian is very deceptive in looks. One feels 
tempted when you know him to refer to him as a pony — 
a term, indeed, commonly employed in Egjrpt — though at 
a distance he looks tall. 

The Spahi's seat is peculiar. It is, from the side view, 



H 



„ 



ARAB SADDLES 233 

much like the type of the aboriginal Indian of our plains. 
When he sits in the saddle he is apt to lean forward ; from 
hip down to knee the leg is almost perpendicular ; and 
from knee down it is thrust back at what we civilized folk 
deem a most unhorsemanlike angle. He hates spurs be- 
cause they prevent his drubbing his horse's flanks with his 
heels, as well as clutching on by them. Still, after a cer- 
tain period of association with the French, fashion will 
sometimes claim him for her own ; he will put on spurs 
and try to keep his heels where they belong. But he is 
then no longer Spahi d la nature. He is very expert in 
the saddle, both in the way of tricks and drill. His Ara- 
bian may look sleepy while he stands, but he will wake 
up to astonishing activity so soon as mounted. He quickly 
catches his rider's mood, and can be either steady or gay 
as you may ask. 

Most Arab saddles have such an abnormal breadth be- 
tween the knees that they oblige you most uncomfortably 
to spread your legs. This does not peculiarly apply to the 
Spahi's saddle, which has been cut, on a sort of a military 
plan, to the Arab pattern. But if you want to try the 
way Orientals usually sit in the saddle, get an extra wide 
cane-seat chair, sit astride it facing the back, and then put 
your heels up on the side rounds. Don't lean on the chair- 
back ; imagine a cantle behind you about two inches above 
the buttons on the back of your coat, and you have it ex- 
actly. If you propose to ride this way, make up your mind 
to the acme of discomfort until you are used to it. Your 
feet will go to sleep, and your hips will get tired enough 
to make you howl before you have covered ten miles. 
Even an old horseman who is used to an English or to our 
military saddle must undergo the same trial. We should 
call it an impossible seat for all-day riding ; but the Ori- 
ental habit of sitting cross-legged, or on a squat, gets the 



234 ARAB BITS 

muscles of the legs and hips used to the confined position, 
and the Arab will stay in the saddle all but as long as the 
cowboy or one of Uncle Sam's soldiers. 

All Arabs ride with a severe gag-bit, just as all bronco 
riders are wont to do. The bit of the country is like one 
style of Mexican bit — to wit, a ring in the horse's mouth 
held in place by the cheek-straps, and with a single branch 
projecting down from the back of it ; and it is to this that 
the reins are attached. Of course the horse guides by the 
neck, as all but hyper-English horses do, and as all horses 
should. The rein is held slack, but the least tightening of it 
on the severe gag-bit compels the horse to jerk up his head. 
The nice use of the curb as taught by the school is quite 
unknown. Each nation has its own peculiar style. The 
Englishman and his imitators like to ride a gentle, easy- 
mouthed horse on a snaffle-bit, and to let him carry his 
head in a natural way, without seeking by suppling to im- 
prove on what nature has done for him. This method 
acts well enough with the average good-mannered horse. 
With any other he must resort to a harsh bit, and the 
horse will take hold of it and worry himself while annoy- 
ing his rider, because he has been taught no better. The 
school-taught horse is an abomination to the Briton ; but 
not so to him who knows his ways. He has a well-trained 
mouth, and a neck whose muscles bend without effort ; he 
brings his head in to either curb or snaffle with that de- 
lightful give and take of the rein which is the height of 
comfort to man and beast, and which is indicative of an 
ability in each to understand the other that exists in no 
other method. The cowboy et id genus omne, and the 
Arab, use a severe bit that hurts the horse's mouth when- 
ever the rein is in any degree tightened ; it throws up his 
head with an uneasy motion which appears to interrupt 
communication between hand and mouth. And yet the 




REMOUNT BARB FOR ALGERIAN CAVALRY 



ARABIAN NECKS 237 

proof of the pudding is in the eating ; these natural riders 
care little for the refinements of horsemanship, despite 
which both cowboy and Spahi are, each in his way, 
inimitable. 

But this nervous dread of the bit distresses me. I have 
a photograph of a line of Spahis coming to a sharp 
" Halt !" and every single horse in the line has his nose in 
the air. A line of school-taught horses would, on the con- 
trary, probably show not one whose head had not been 
brought in quietly to the bit; still they would have 
stopped just as short, and vastly more comfortably to 
man and beast. In the one case the horse has no dread 
of the bit, and the neck is supple ; in the other he fears it, 
and his neck is generally stiff. Artists have a trick of 
painting Arabians with the neck finely arched, but this is 
just what the gag-bit prevents. It is the rarest thing to 
see an Arabian carry what schoolmen call a good head. 
His nose is uniformly in the air when his head is up ; only 
when fretting on the bit does he arch his neck, and then 
he gets his head way down. That nature has given him 
a peculiarly fine neck is true ; the lines of the crest and 
throttle are exquisite ; that he almost never arches it is 
equally so. The three-year-old illustrated brings his head 
in because he is being broken with a bit and bridoon. It 
is not uncommon to see the Arabian, properly bitted by 
a European owner, carry a perfect head. He could not 
be made on a better model ; but the Arab's method does 
not utilize what nature has given him. 

It does not seem to me that the method of the cowboy 
or that of the Arab makes a good mouth. Neither bronco 
nor Arabian, except under abnormal conditions, ever 
pulls ; he never even tightens the rein. This is no doubt 
better than the common run of English-broken horses on 
a snaffle, who will take hold of you, and bore and bore 



238 ONE-REIN DRIVING 

until your arms ache ; but, on the other hand, it is far from 
being the delightful feel of the school method, where there 
is a fine and delicate but constant appreciation by the 
man of the horse's mouth, and by the horse of his mas- 
ter's mood and wishes. It is certain that no school airs 
could be taught with a bit of which the horse is as shy as 
he is of the cowboy's and the Arab's ; and I have noticed 
that in the fantaslyas — of which anon — the Arab is wont 
to make his bit less severe, if it is of the kind he can alter, 
or else to use an easier one. Nor could school airs be 
taught to a horse capable of boring on your hand. 

While speaking of guiding by the neck, I will mention 
a very queer way the Arabs have of driving with a single 
rope, one almost as peculiar as our own way of driving an 
army mule-team. The horse or mule so driven wears only 
a rope-halter, from which the rein-rope passes back to the 
cart on the nigh side of the neck. He has a very high, 
round saddle to bear the cart-shafts. If the driver desires 
to turn to the left, he simply pulls the rope. If to the 
right, he tosses the rope over to the off side of the saddle 
and then pulls. This pull bears the rope against the nigh 
side of the horse's neck, and thus turns him to the right. 
In other words, the horse is taught to guide one way by 
the neck and the other by the rein. This is common 
enough under saddle, but the method of driving seems 
original. 

In our old Civil War times the method of teaching mules 
to turn to right or left was wont to be more speedily effi- 
cacious than reasonable. The nigh mule of the pair of 
leaders had a single rein buckled in the nigh ring of the 
bit. The off mule had a bar from the front of the nigh 
mule's collar to his own bit, so that he must turn, nilly 
willy, with his mate. To turn the pair to the left the rein 
was steadily pulled ; the near mule had his head brought 




SPAHI RACKING ALONG THE ROAD 



Il 



TRAINING MULES 241 

round to the left by the pull ; he was apt to follow his 
nose ; the off mule was pulled over in the same direction 
by the bar, and presto ! the trick was done. The mule 
soon caught on to this thing. But to turn to the right 
was quite a different matter. The only other thing the 
driver could do with the rein was to jerk it ; but this con- 
veyed no special idea to the mule — he must be taught the 
jerk as an arbitrary symbol. So, when drilling the mule 
to go over to the right, the driver had with him an assist- 
ant with a stick, who walked along close to the nigh 
mule's head. When the driver pulled the rein, he did 
nothing ; when he jerked it, the assistant gave the mule a 
lusty whack on the near side of the head. The mule very 
naturally sought refuge away from the blow, turned his 
mate with him, and presto ! that trick, too, was done. The 
mule lacks not intelligence, and he very speedily learned 
that a jerked rein was very apt to be followed by a blow 
on the near side of the head, and made haste to get away 
from it. The plan was crude but effective. 

The same method in petto has for generations been a 
favorite with the school-master, who has thumped the al- 
phabet into his pupils' heads with his knuckles. How 
much happier is the child of to-day with his Reading 
Without Tears, than the child of sixty years ago, when the 
vowels were not recited a-e-i-o-u, but a by itself a, e by it- 
self e, i by itself i, etc. Fancy spelling " puzzle" p-u by 
itself u-izzard-puz ; izzard-1-e by itself e-izzle-puzzle. Yet 
I have known a man who, in E"ew England, was taught 
to spell that way early in this century. 

One of the Spahis in the illustrations is racking along 
in a very horsemanlike manner, except that one cannot 
become reconciled to the nose in the air — it constantly 
suggests a bit which the horse fears. The other, at first 
blush, is riding a brute. But a look at him shows that the 

16 




SPAHI, EQUIPPED FOR FANTASIYA, MAKING HIS HORSE REAR 

rise is not horse-play or ugliness ; the rider is forcing the 
animal to rear as an exhibition of horsemanship. This is 
by no means the fine performance which the school re- 
quires, but rather a crude and shallow trick, common at 
the fantaslyas or horse-parties, where ail the riders of the 
neighborhood meet to show off their steeds and to let off 
superfluous steam. The shawl hanging over the croup is 
the drapery usual at this ceremony. All ceremonials, an- 



— 



HORSE TRICKS 243 

cient and modern, appear to have demanded draping, more 
or less extensive, of the horses. Pictures of the ancient 
tournament always show the horses draped to the ground. 
As in the case of every people, one may pick flaws in 
the Spain's horsemanship ; but despite his want of delicate 
handling, he is clearly one of the best of horsemen, as he 
understands the art, and is as devoted to his beast as is 
the most traditional of Arabs. 



XLI 

The French cavalryman rides well, as all mounted men 
serving a long enlistment do. In Algeria he interests us 
because of his horse. His saddle is much like our old-fash- 
ioned artillery pattern; his equipments y&ry little from 
the usual. But he has some objectionable ways. In or- 
der to make his horse walk fast, which he accomplishes 
well enough, he is, like his congener in France, continually 
drubbing his flanks with his heels. This habit tends to 
make him grip too much with the calf of the leg, and to 
turn out his toes in an ungainly fashion. A man ought to 
ride close and be ready to grip with all the legs he has 
got ; but one does not like to see the heels constantly held 
too close. The leg, from the knee down, should be nearly 
or quite perpendicular — in fact, naturally pendent— a habit 
which will keep the feet where they properly belong. One 
finds lamentably unmilitary riding among soldiers in this 
generation : the habit is marked, even in Berlin or Paris, 
Avhere a cuirassier or a Uhlan is often seen trotting along, 
trying to rise and leaning forward for the purpose, when 
his stirrups are too long to enable him to do so otherwise 
than with an awkward bump. You never see one of our 
cavalrymen do this. After observing modern army-riding 
in most of the countries of the accessible world, I am in- 
clined to prefer a thoroughly good West Point seat to any ; 
not the tongs-on-the-wall seat which sometimes obtains, 
but that which most nearly approaches the natural in our 
usual army-saddle. And be it noted that even the Briton 



RIDING ENGLISH FASHION 245 

of to-day is coming back from the very short stirrups he 
used to consider essential to fox-hunting, to a seat much 
more like the bareback. 

Talking of sticking out the toes, since the abolition of 
the old style, every rider is subject to the habit. I can 
remember when the rule was to keep the feet parallel 
with the horse — a thing never now done, and, be it ac- 
knowledged, rarely kept to then. We Americans have the 
only cavalry which rides with hooded wooden stirrups. 
Perhaps these are not handsome per se ; but any soldier 
who has ridden day after day with the thermometer ever 
so far below zero will bless the man who first invented 
this protection against frozen feet. And, moreover, if a 
man is going to turn out his toes, our hooded stirrup 
quite hides the trick which a brass stirrup makes unduly 
prominent. 

The French officers have, of late years, all taken to the 
English saddle, and ride ostentatiously d VAnglciise, a 
regular " to cover " gait. There is, all the travelled world 
over nowadays, nothing more marked than the influence 
of all things British. In my early European tours in the 
fifties, the Englishman, and especially the English maiden, 
were outrageously caricatured. The Briton was the butt 
of all comic stories; he was the stock-in-trade of the ra- 
conteur ; proverbial philosophy was fairly shot at him; 
nothing about him was acceptable but that universal 
panacea, the £ sterling. But now the tide has set in his 
favor ; everything everywhere is so English, you know ; 
not only his beefsteaks and his tweed suits, but his man- 
ners and his horsemanship are in every section of the 
habitable globe ; you are even invited in France to five 
6'cloquer with your lady friends. The countries the Briton 
has overrun have found that he possesses other sterling qual- 
ities besides the £ s. d. And well it is. An infusion of good 



246 TO COVER STYLE 

Anglo-Saxon common-sense has been a distinct benefit all 
over the Continent ; and the sublimity of British egoism 
in accepting the change is truly delightful. Were I not a 
Yankee of the Yankees, might I be a Briton! He feels 
that he may seize the best of everything as a right, and 
takes umbrage if some one has got ahead of him. As a 
cowboy divides all mankind into ranchmen (the sheep) 
and tenderfoots (the goats), so the Briton knows but two 
classes : subjects of her Majesty or — what is the modern 
equivalent of the ftdpfiapoi of the ancient world? Philis- 
tines? He is monumental, your Briton. I love him for 
his magnificence of self-assertion, his unlimited " side ;" I 
am disposed to hate him when he treads on my traveller's 
toes, as now and then he happens to do. 

Among his imitators are the army men. No doubt 
Continental officers have profited by the bit of English 
rough-riding they have learned of late years, bat their 
self-assumed British style looks like overdoing the prac- 
tical. When smokeless powder shall have brought all uni- 
forms down to butternut or some other humdrum color, 
this style will be eminently proper ; but so long as the 
gay and gaudy is de rigueur in the uniform, the method of 
riding ought to correspond. Not that there is the least 
objection to English horsemanship or English tweed suits. 
On the contrarv, both are practical, admirable. But to 
see an officer with red peg-top trousers, gold-laced red cap, 
a light-blue jacket trimmed "with ribbons and bibbons 
and loops and lace," and a dangling sabre, on a flat Eng- 
lish saddle, and rising to a swinging trot as if he were 
astride a cover-hack, is too much like serving you Veuve 
Cliquot in a pewter mug to suit my ideas of the appropri- 
ate. Veuve Cliquot is good ; so is a pewter mug ; but the 
twain do not match. Moreover, if a soldier uses his two 
hands to guide his horse, as these French Anglomaniacs 



NO ANGLOPHOBIST 247 

do, how, forsooth, shall he use his sabre or his carbine % I 
must not be construed as objecting to the trot. It is an 
essential gait, and the one our own army men most con- 
stantly use as an alternate with the walk. But a soldier 
should ride a soldier's trot, not a cross-country rider's — at 
least, when in uniform. Else why the uniform? This 
being but an outward and visible sign of the inward and 
spiritual discipline, why not preserve the other elements 
which go to show the soldier ? Pipe-clay is disappearing. 
It was only a manifestation of discipline at any time ; and 
as a uniform is exactly this and no more, the soldier's 
ways should be in keeping with the dress. 

I am solicitous to avoid the imputation that may be 
cast upon me of being an Anglophobist. Like Artemas 
Ward, I scorn the allegation and defy the allegator. What 
I have heretofore said ought to suffice to prove that no 
one has a more sincere regard and admiration for most 
things English than I. Her Gracious Majesty the Queen- 
Empress has scarce a more loyal subject. Why, I can re- 
member her way back in 1851, in the Great Exhibition 
year, when she was still a young queen, and used still not 
infrequently to be seen in the saddle in the Park. My 
loyalty to her has never swerved, and my six or seven 
years in England have made me almost a Briton, in fact, as 
my old Salem ancestry truly was up to 1776, of glorious 
memory. But may I not criticise withal ? Is my loyalty 
the less because, when I get wrathy, I " write to the 
Times V In horse sports, as a nation, the English are 
easily first. I grant it with pleasure, and whenever I 
take down Whyte Melville or some other charming chron- 
icler of the hunting- field, I fall in love anew with this 
splendid people and their ever-green land. But — well, the 
buts have already been put in. Let us change the subject 
as radically as we can. God save the Queen ! 



XLII 

Of all horse-flesh, so to speak, the patient little com- 
monplace e very-day ass takes the lead. There is no de- 
nying him the palm. Were I a Homer or a Dante, or eke 
a Holmes, I would indite an epic, or at least pen an heroic 
rhyme to the character, strength, and courage of this 
noblest of the equine race. In every country where se- 
vere economics are thrust upon the people, the ass comes 
to the rescue and does the work which no other creature 
alive can do. He lives on nothing ; he is rarely fed — in 
times of drought or extra hard work a pittance of barley 
— but is turned loose to find what he may. He is never 
vicious or obstinate, but works on hard and faithfully 
till his poor old ears flop downward from age, his head 
droops from weariness, and he literally falls under his load 
and dies in his tracks, after serving his often cruel master 
some score or more of years. When he is put to work as 
a yearling — for he often is — he does not last so long. I 
have ridden one at eighteen months which had been 
trained but two weeks, and yet was gentle, bridle-wise, 
and well-gaited. Where is there such a horse? 

The habit of cruelty to the ass, though universal, is 
sometimes only thoughtlessness. It is bred in the bone. 
You will see a child cuffing and beating a donkey w T hich 
is standing under its load at the door, " just to learn how." 
The utility of the ass is always recognized. iEsop, who 
tells us that to the ass's prayer for a less cruel master Jove 
replied that it was beyond even his power to change the 



THE PATIENT ASS 249 

human heart, but that he would do the next best thing 
and give his supplicant a tough hide, unquestionably knew 
both men and donkeys. In Mexico, when two Indian 
farmers meet, they pass the time of day, inquire for each 
other's wives and children, and then always comes the 
question, " How is the burro 3" Indeed, as the burro earns 
the daily bread for the family, this is natural enough. No 
doubt the h'mar of the East is equally considered ; but he 
is the victim of man's heedlessness and capacity for cruelty 
and experimenting. 

There is one queer asinine trick the Arabs have. With 
the notion that the Lord did not know how to make the 
donkey's nostril, they slit it upward two or three inches 
" to give him more room to breathe." They say, too, that 
it improves the tone of his bray, though this may be ques- 
tioned by all who have listened to his delectable song. 
Still, the Arab is fairly generous to the little toiler ; there 
are comparatively few sore -backed donkeys in Algeria, 
Tunis, and Egypt, which speaks more for the people than 
can be said of Italy or Spain or Mexico. 

There is no question that, feeding quite apart, the ass 
will kill any horse or mule ; and it is clear that, weight 
for weight and load for load, he daily outdoes the camel. 
The latter, weighing fifteen hundred pounds, carries five 
hundred ; the ass weighs two hundred and fifty to four 
hundred pounds, and carrying one hundred and fifty to 
three hundred, outwalks the camel by a mile an hour. In 
the Mexican mines, a donkey which weighs not over five 
hundred pounds at the outside, will carry a load of ore 
equal to his own weight out of the mine, go back empty, 
and work all day. He is fed high to enable him to do 
this, and does not live long ; but what other mammal can 
equal this feat for even a week ? 

The donkey is guided by the voice, a stick, or a rope- 



250 SIZE OF ASSES 

halter. The halter-rope lies on the left side, and is pulled 
to turn him to the left, or borne across the neck to turn 
him to the right. The stick is used to touch his neck on 
either side if you desire him to turn to the other. Or the 
least raising of the stick suffices ; while, if you are walk- 
ing behind him, a mere touch on either flank will turn him 
quickly and surely. It is most commonly the stick which 
is used, and this serves the double purpose of guiding and 
striking. But, Lord save the mark ! it is wont to be the 
man who needs the stick, not the beast. No more patient 
creature exists ; it is not he who is obstinate or treach- 
erous, it is his master. Dear, patient ass ! did we but rec- 
ognize the half of thy virtues, we should glory in being 
called by thy name, not resent the appellation ! 

The donkey in the Orient is often very small. I have 
measured them, full-grown, only thirty-two inches high — 
no bigger than a St. Bernard ; not so big as some of the 
prize-winners. I rode one last winter to Abraham's Oak 
from Hebron, on which my toes touched the ground though 
I was on a pad ; and I measure but five feet seven. The 
little fellow seemed to make nothing of my one hundred 
and fifty pounds, but racked away at a good four and a 
half miles an hour. On a creature like this a load equal to 
half his own weight will habitually be put ; his owner will 
ride atop of the load, and the little hero w r ill go off at a 
sharpish running- walk and do his twenty-five miles a day. 
This sounds incredible, but it is literally true. The ass in 
Algeria often carries three-fourths of his own weight all 
day long. One sees two men on a donkey which weighs 
a bare four hundred pounds — a load and a man on a 
donkey they claim to weigh only two hundred and fifty 
pounds. The little creature can be bought for seven or 
eight francs, does during his life the work of a dozen men, 
and exhibits the virtues of a score of saints. I was tempted 



Hd^, 




- 




fv pi^^ 













COUNTRYMAN ON AN ASS 



"ARTIFICIAL" GAITS 253 

to buy a hundred to send to the Columbian Fair, and a 
contractor offered to deliver them on board the Marseilles 
packet at Tunis for seven hundred francs. This is barely 
half a cent a pound, not counting the virtues. One sees 
Arabs coming into Constantine with a donkey -load of 
wood, which they sell for three francs. They have come 
twenty-five miles with it ; they sell it, and next day ride 
the donkey back. As a meal costs them but two cents, 
the wood nothing, and the donkey does all the work, what 
seems a small profit for a two or three days' trip is really 
a good one. And who is it that earns it ? 

As I have previously observed, all saddle-beasts in the 
East go what those who would limit the horse to the Eng- 
lish standard are pleased to call " artificial " gaits. In fact, 
three-quarters of all the animals in the w r orld which are 
used for riding do so. Mules broken to saddle always 
what they call "sidle" or amble; all donkeys running- 
walk, rack, or amble. They scarcely have to be taught. 
Little ass-colts often rack alongside of their dams as if 
there were no other method of progression. I have seen 
bullocks amble or rack. Why, then, are these paces arti- 
ficial? They are in reality natural to every member of 
the equine race — I might say to all four-footed animals. 
But it is chiefly in our Southern States that these gaits 
have been studied as an art, and have been improved upon 
and bred from. 

The donkey in Algeria is not used for riding by all 
classes, rich and poor, as he is in Egypt and Syria. In fact, 
he is rarely seen with a saddle. He has a pad, very simi- 
lar to the pad on which the bespangled queens of the saw- 
dust ring dance their short hour to delighted boys and 
rustics, only more crude and better suited to his diminutive 
proportions. This pad has no stirrups, and is so wide as 
to make a seat on it extremely tiring to the uninitiated. 



254 ARAB PADS 

The Arab sits astride or sidevvise, and as the pad is rarely 
girthed at all, or at best by a slender cord, it is much like 
walking on a tight-rope or managing a birch-bark canoe 
to sit on it, until you " catch on." It is the reverse of our 
trick of girthing a horse well and then sticking to the sad- 
dle. The horse, when in the service of a native, is not un- 
commonly equipped, in the same way. Between this pad, 
which serves equally for riding and loading, and the sad- 
dle of the Spahi, there is a vast category of sizes and 
styles ; all, however, much too wide. I have often seen a 
pair of stirrups improvised by tying two bags together, 
slinging them across the pad, turning in one corner of each, 
and thrusting the foot into the pocket thus made. This 
sounds ingenious, and is really so, but such a flimsy pre- 
text for a saddle, or, in fact, all the gear used for saddle or 
harness all over the Orient, would be cast on the dump- 
heap by the poorest American farmer. He would not risk 
his bones with it. 

The life of a saddle or a harness is much like that of a 
line city vehicle. A swell, for instance, buys a five-hun- 
dred-dollar buggy, and uses it three or four years. It 
then goes to auction, and is bought by some one who runs 
it in the suburbs for six or eight more. Thence it goes, 
by another auction sale, to a countryman, who will run it 
twenty years, unless it sooner meets with the fate of the 
one-hoss shay. In the Orient you never see saddle or har- 
ness in any but the latter state. They always look as if 
they had never been new. 



XLIII 

The Arab is a tall, straight-featured, well-shaped man, 
varying in color from a dark bronze to a tone quite as 
white as some Europeans. He is decidedly handsome. 
Women are apt to be struck by the manly beauty of the 
Tunisian, and he is indeed a fine specimen. Men have less 
chance to be struck by the good looks of the Tunisian 
women, for only the veriest apologies for women are ever 
allowed outside the harem walls unless closely veiled. I 
must, however, except the pretty young Jewess — bless her 
heart! — who goes freely about in a sack-coat and tight 
trousers, and showing her face — bar powder — just as the 
Lord made it. 

The Arab is, in his way, cleanly. He is supposed to 
wash his feet before praying, and his hands and face be- 
fore and after eating — many, in fact, do so ; and he is apt 
to bathe in streams at not infrequent intervals, unless the 
weather be too cold. But — and there is in the Orient 
always a but on this subject — he can scarcely be gauged as 
up to our standard of what is next akin to godliness. One 
sees at the hut doors all too many instances of cerebral 
insecticide to be reconciled to the Arab as a clean mortal. 
No odor of nationality is, however, apt to exist in a dry 
climate, so that he is, quoad the nostril, unobjectionable. 

I am not so sure, by-the-way, that cleanliness is next 
akin to godliness ; I should be tempted to reverse the 
terms. If you want to convert a heathen, it is, despite 
the precedent, clearly a blunder to begin by telling him 



256 THE ARAB AS A MAN 

that all his ancestors are in sheol, whether you yourself be- 
lieve the statement or not. The more natural process, it 
seems to me, would be first to dump him into a bath-tub, 
or the equivalent most handy ; then to fill his stomach ; 
last, to bring up the religious question. The word bath- 
tub is generic ; it denotes every physical means of cleanli- 
ness. Unquestionably, a well -scrubbed, well-fed savage 
would be more apt to take to the truths of theology than 
a hungry one grovelling in his native filth. But let us 
taboo religious discussion as well as political. I may be 
treading on some good horse friend's toes, though I have 
found most horsemen liberal in their dogmas, even if old- 
fashioned in their faith. 

Despite his good looks and well-knit frame, the value of 
the Arab as a laborer is not great. He works by fits and 
starts, and the intervals between fits are long. He can 
and does at times work hard and fast, but it is only to 
indulge the longer in laziness by- and -by. Many of the 
pastoral Arabs who own flocks gauge his value closely ; 
they hire herdsmen for their food, three dollars, and two 
sheep a year. Lodging is alfresco most of the time. The 
shepherd is expected to get along in any weather which 
will not kill off his herd ; and as to clothing, an Arab 
herdsman can get on with a minimum. So long as the 
warp and weft of a bit of cotton cloth will hold together, 
he can, with the use of thorns for pins, fashion a garment 
which meets all his requirements. In cold weather he and 
his sheep or goats herd together in any convenient shelter 
— under the brow of a hill or behind a clump of rocks, or 
in one of the natural caverns which abound in a slaty 
country — and he gets a great part of his warmth from 
them. Most of the year he can bask in more sunshine 
than we should like. 

One can have a deal too much of a good thing, even of 



THE RICH ARAB 257 

old Sol's company. A story is told of a British tar of the 
ancient order of things who had been cruising on the 
coast of Africa for several years and was finally ordered 
home. As his ship sailed up the English Channel, in a 
fine hearty yellow fog, out of which one could cut chunks 
with a hatchet, the hard-baked old tar, coming up from 
below, drew big inspirations of the home air into his 
lungs, and " Ah, shipmate," said he, " 'ere's w T eather for 
you. None of your blasted sunshine !" He had had too 
much of a good thing. 

In what I say of the people I am, of course, not referring 
to the educated, intelligent Arab. He is what well-to-do 
folk are everywhere. I passed some days with the Caliph 
of K'sar H'lal, and can truthfully say that I have never 
met a man with finer instincts, nobler presence, or more 
abundant courtesy, no part of which came from any source 
but his own deep character and native training. There are 
also sheiks in the same vicinity who would murder you 
for your money until you had broken bread with them ; 
but so there are in America, and breaking bread with these 
will by no means serve you. 

There are rich and well-bred city Arabs who have 
learned many ways from the Franks with whom they 
come in contact ; but I prefer their own native customs. 
The unspoiled, well-mannered, educated Arab can scarcely 
be improved on — save in what we are vain enough to call 
intelligence. But who shall measure intelligence? Theirs 
suffices for them, and ours appears to them heathenish. 
To learn a few thousand texts from the Koran affords 
them an altogether better culture than all our science and 
art and letters — so they claim. 

They all dress alike — Arabs, Berbers, Moors, and the rest. 
Item : one " b'iled rag," not the b'iled rag of the wild and 
woolly West, but a yard or two of cotton cloth, cut off a 
11 



258 THE ARAB'S CLOTHES 

piece and sewed up bag - fashion, with holes made in it 
for the head and arms, now and then affording the luxury 
of short sleeves ; and which under no circumstances what- 
soever is b'iled until age has withered and custom staled it 
into actual rags. Item : if well off, a sleeveless buttoned 
vest. Item : real " bags," to adopt our young hunting 
swell's term, for trousers. Sartorially speaking, these are 
made of cotton, and are literally like a bag whose depth 
is equal to a little more than the distance from waist 
to knee, and whose width equals thrice or more times the 
distance a man can stretch apart his legs. Cut out the 
two corners of the bottom of the bag, step through the 
holes, and tie the stuff — hemmed or not according to fancy 
— around the knees ; then gather up the mouth around 
the waist, and you have the Plymouth Kock pants du 
pays. There is thus left pendent between the Arab's legs 
a bag big enough to hide himself in. Less stuff will suffice 
if there be not enough on hand. The origin and utility of 
this leg-gear it were vain to inquire. Item : one scarf to go 
a number of times round the waist. Item : if cold, an ad- 
ditional shirt-like garment of woollen goods coming down 
below the knees. Item : one burnoose, or peculiarly-cut 
cloak of white or, in Tunis, blue woollen stuff, with a 
very roomy hood, exceeding loose, so as to wrap about 
one and throw over the shoulder. Item : one fez, with 
some cotton cloth twisted up rope-fashion to wrap around 
it in the guise of a turban. Item : one pair of shoes (or 
not, as the case may be), made of anything from woven 
rushes to Morocco leather. 

There are some variations to all this, but they are slight. 
The Arab is everywhere clothed in bags, right or wrong 
side up. In this dress, or so much of it as he can afford, 
the native lives day and night, from early manhood to 
old age, and when he dies he is buried in it, or the gar- 



TROUSERS 259 

ments go to his son and heir. A very few working city 
Arabs wear ready-made clothing from France, England, 
or perchance even America. More's the pity ! It sounds 
the death-knell to national costume. 

Where shall we go next to find an unspoiled nation, ex- 
cept away to the interior of Asia or Africa ? The very 
remotest corners of the earth are invaded by ready-made 
clothes. If the Bible could be introduced with half the 
ease of these abominations, this generation would see the 
millennium with its own eyes. When I say Bible, by-the- 
way, I mean the Sermon on the Mount, and not Jonah 
and the Whale, as an article of faith. Far bej^ond the 
reach of the railroad you see graceful national costumes 
supplanted, by cheap European clothing. Now, I maintain 
that national character resides largely in legs. Years ago 
you needed only to look as high as a man's knees to tell his 
nationality. Think of the delicious legs of the old-time 
Italian peasant — real stage-brigand legs, pure and unde- 
filed — now chased into inaccessible mountain recesses ! 
Think of the legs of the Kussian peasant of to-day, all 
boots and padding, no more to be unwrapped than an 
Egyptian mummy ! But all fin de siecle legs look alike. 
It is only when you get way beyond the path of Cook's 
Tours that you find either a typa of clothing or the grace- 
ful looseness of garment which ignorance of civilization 
breeds. 

I believe that no trouser-wearing human being, unless 
he be a much - travelled man, can have any idea of the 
horrible perversity of the cut of the Oriental home-made 
pants ; it is atrocious, heart-rending. The variety of bad- 
ness in style must be imagined ; it cannot be described, 
but — well, it reminds me of an incident, the real origin of 
the story as since sometimes narrated. It was very many 
years ago, when the now godlike Poole was struggling 



260 BAGGY KNEES 

into celebrity. A friend of mine, Mr. Hand, a city solic- 
itor, had all through life hated his legs, principally because 
his trousers bagged at the knees with that pertinacity 
which, among inanimate objects, only trousers can exhibit. 
"Why don't you go to Poole's?" said a peripatetic, fla- 
neur club friend; "his trousers never bag; look at mine!" 
So off goes Hand to Poole's, states his case, and, under the 
assurance that the forthcoming garments shall not bag at 
the knees, orders several pairs at three times the custom- 
ary price. They by -and -by came home, and were de- 
lightful to look upon, to incase one's legs in ; but alas, in 
a se'nnight or so, the telltale bagginess began to be seen. 
In a rage, off marched Hand to his Sartorial Highness, de- 
termined to have the law of him. "It is not necessary to 
look at them, Mr. Hand," calmly replied the self-satisfied 
ninth to Hand's aggressive salutation ; " our trousers never 
bag at the knees." " But there they are— as bad as any 
eight-and-sixpenny pair made in the city !" screamed irate 
Hand. Adjusting his eye-glass, the apparently surprised 
but none the less confident tailor condescendingly stooped, 
smoothed his hand down the front of the garment in dis- 
pute, gazed at the knees a moment, and then, taking from 
a distance a side view of the same, and dropping his glass 
with a half -supercilious, half- pitying smile: "Why, Mr. 
Hand," quoth he, " you have been sitting down in those 
trousers !" They were park trousers, to be promenaded 
in, no more. 

The Arab in Algeria and Tunis may be dressed in rags 
and tatters, but he is no beggar. Only the blind beg. This 
is really a point in his favor, and it is a great relief from 
the mendicancy of many other countries to find a poor 
population which does not hang on } r our skirts for alms. 
So much can, however, not be said of his brother beyond 
the desert, nor can it be said of any country where, owing 



FINE FEATHERS 261 

to the folly of tourists, the word backsheesh is current 
coin. 

The rich man among the Arabs dresses richly. His 
shirt is of fine linen. His inside vest is buttoned, the out- 
side one is worn loose. A long paletot often takes the 
place of the latter. It is cut part way down from the 
throat, and the loose armholes allow the arms to be held 
in or outside. The wide trousers are bound about the 
waist by a costly scarf. Over all is frequently worn the 
long, loose tunic, cut Y shape at the neck, and with short 
sleeves set on low down. The hands are as frequently 
kept inside as out— in winter for warmth, in summer from 
habit ; and an Arab reaches out from the Y at the neck 
for anything he wants handed him with a peculiarly lim- 
ited motion, which at first you fail to comprehend. The 
burnoose is an out-of-doors garment, and the fez may or 
may not have the turban -cloth. The swell wears what 
look like European socks, and his slippers, usually trodden 
down at heel by the common or careless, are handsomely 
embroidered, or else of fine morocco, red or yellow. The 
calf of the leg is naked. Parts of this dress are dropped at 
intervals according to the season. There are few persons 
more really magnificent than a well-dressed Arab sheik, 
or a man of wealth. In our days of business suits which 
clothe all kinds and conditions of men, the dress is uncom- 
monly attractive — on an Arab. That it would work in 
with our habits one would hardly allege. But the trou- 
sers, of whatever cut, have one manifest advantage — they 
do not, cannot, bag at the knee, whether you sit or stand. 



XLIV 

To come back to our quadrupeds. This dress is, of all 
clothing, the one you and I would select as being most 
illy adapted to horseback work; and yet the Arab is 
equally at home in the saddle or sitting with his legs 
crossed under him. Like all every-day and all-day horse- 
men, he is perfect within his lines. Some people yield him 
the palm among all riders, an opinion which I do not 
share. He might perhaps be said to occupy the highest 
position among horsemen, in that he has bred and edu- 
cated the most docile race of horses known to man, and 
the one which has given the civilized world the impress 
of thorough blood. But as a rider I am inclined to think 
that our own skilful equestrian could beat him in riding 
over a country, in rounding-up a big bunch of ugly, stam- 
peded cattle, in the twists and brushes of polo, in school- 
riding, or in almost any duty or pleasure requiring in its 
kind horsemanship of the highest order. This has really 
been demonstrated in some things ; but, ex uno, we must 
not fall into the error of cliscere omnes. The Arab, when 
he is a horseman, is a superb one, even though he does not 
come within our canons of the art. When the horse is 
only a beast of burden or a means of transportation, the 
Arab is no better than his ilk elsewhere. When, as in the 
desert, the horse is his pet, his companion by day, his 
dream by night, the Arab is, in a sense, incomparable. No 
master can be more kind. No dog is more intelligent than 
the dark, liquid-eyed mare he has bred and trained, whose 



ARABIAN MARES 263 

ancestresses a hundred generations back his ancestors 
have loved and trusted. This mare — would that we hu- 
man beings had not been civilized out of so many of 
our animal qualities ! — will follow him day and night. She 
would fret her soul out at being hitched to a post, and her 
master would scorn to tie her. She will stand immov- 
able in the midst of danger and fright which would make 
any of our horses frantic. She will carry her master 
through fire and water. She will unflinchingly face 
wounds and death so long as the hand which has fed her 
is laid upon her neck. She will stand over her disabled 
lord till help arrives, or she will go alone to seek it and 
return with it to find him. She will kneel for him to 
mount, and she will bear him bravely home, if she falls a 
sacrifice to her devotion at the door of her master's tent. 
These are not always fables. The horse, treated as he 
should be, generation after generation, develops a rare in- 
telligence, and shows as noble an affection as the dog. 
But, as above said, even in Arabia, this horse is the pearl 
of great price. Thrice happy the sheik or caliph who 
truly claims to own one ! 

In the desert proper the horse is not always shod ; in 
the stony localities he must be. The Frank shoe in Al- 
gerian cities, owing to the European influence, is driving 
out the old Arabian plate. The foot of the unshod horse 
is everywhere and always strong and healthy. The Ara- 
bian foot is, in fact, uniformly good. I have scarcely 
seen a horse point, even on the pavement. There are few 
interferers ; some overreach in harness, but not of course 
in the saddle, as no unspoiled Arab can be persuaded to 
ride a trot, and this is the only gait in which the habit 
can prevail. 



XLV 

One of the great events of the year in Algerian mat- 
ters equine are the races at Biskra, on the edge of the des- 
ert, or in what one might more properly call the first 
oasis. In Tunis the fantasiya is the fad. One can scarce- 
ly compare the Biskra races to our own, but they bring 
out some rather fine specimens of horse-flesh, and have 
some curious features. Among these are camel -races, 
at which some of the best running camels compete, not 
at long distance, which is their great power, but at short 
distances for speed — a thing they are not remarkable for, 
according to the creed of these modern days. 

The running camel is to the porter camel as the thor- 
ough-bred to the mongrel cart-horse — the one has speed in 
a certain sense and vast endurance at speed; the latter 
has no speed, but simply great endurance under weight 
or at traction. I saw a couple of laboring camels, worth 
about a hundred and twenty-five dollars apiece, each do- 
ing quite the work of a pair of horses, which were run- 
ning an olive - crushing mill belonging to my friend, the 
caliph, on three-hour shifts, day and night, and had been 
doing it for a number of months. Such a camel will car- 
ry five hundred pounds a great many consecutive hours. 
They eat little and drink less — actually considerably less 
— than a horse ; and their excretions are correspondingly 
small. 

The Biskra races are got up mainly by the Europeans, 
but the great delight of the Arab horseman is the fanta- 




BICHARI CAMEL-RIDEHS, UPPER EGYPT 



siya, and they always have one or more such events. The 
entries to these number all manner of horsemen, armed 
and unarmed, who ride more or less wild figures to more 
or less monotonous drumming music, and who end by a 
most excited and exciting pot-pourri of feat riding. They 
stand in their stirrups and throw their guns in the air, 
whirl them about in the most approved warlike style, and 
fire them at intervals in what seems an uncalled for and 
dangerous fashion until you know that they are loaded 
only with blank-cartridge. The horses for the moment par- 
take the enthusiastic bedevilment of their masters, and 
rear, wheel, kick, buck, rush, stop, turn, and twist for all 
the world like a bunch of broncos after a winter's rest, 



266 THE "FANTASIYA" 

the men shouting meanwhile, yelling, screaming like so 
many demons. No picture can do justice to the kaleido- 
scopic fervor and wildness of the scene, if many riders are 
engaged in it. It is a seething whirlpool of wild, unmean- 
ing, half-merry, half-fanatical excitement, in which no end 
of excellent horsemanship comes to the fore. From time 
to time the riders stop and rank themselves for a rest on 
one side; then out come individuals to show what their 
steeds can do. They pirouette and dance a while, and 
then make a rush at full gallop to one or other side, stop 
suddenly, and wheel about. There is no specific art in 
what they do ; each man has trained his horse on his own 
untrained ideas. They have a close seat, clinging with 
their heels, and exhibit a great deal of skill, in their gy- 
ratory exercises ; but once seen, the fantasiya, like a 
circus, loses its interest. All semi-wild nations do about 
the same tricks on horseback. I think our Indian, or a 
Cossack, will easily excel them all, while nothing I have 
ever seen in fantasiyas in the faintest degree approaches 
the fine work of the school-trained horse in the hands of 
a master of the art. The one depends on speed and 
violent motion ; the other on slow and rhythmic move- 
ments, vastly more difficult to execute, and requiring a 
system of education which the fantasly a work quite lacks. 
The one is a sailors' hornpipe rapidly played on a fiddle ; 
the other is an adagio of Schumann on an Amati. 

Here is one of the Arabian horsemen, ready to take part 
in the fantasiy 'a. His seat and steed show the type well ; 
man and horse are what you are wont to see. In action 
this horse will show to decidedly better advantage. The 
docile nature of the Arabian robs him of much of his 
beauty in a picture at rest. Yet if you examine him stand- 
ing, you will find many points to commend, few to con- 
demn. 






n 



"RIDING HOME" 269 

As you perceive, from this man's seat, a spur would be 
of no use to him, and a decided irritation to his well-man- 
nered mount ; for an Arab of the people can no more 
forego the luxury of beating time on his horse's ribs than 
an Indian. Even when riding with counterless slippers 
and without stirrups, he manages to keep up the swinging 
of his legs, and yet he never loses a slipper. An occa- 
sional stirrup is made with a sharp point on the inside to 
use in lieu of a spur on the heel. This wide, flat stirrup 
is not uncomfortable. It is curved upward, and affords a 
means of resting the foot by constant change of position. 
The Arab usually thrusts his foot home in it. In fact, 
nearly all horsemen do " ride home." The cowbo} 7 , unless 
he has them hooded, wears the big wooden stirrups against 
his ankle. Our trooper, with the hooded stirrup, cannot 
thrust his foot beyond the point where his toe touches the 
hood ; but if perchance he has a pair of hoodless wooden 
stirrups he is apt to get his foot well in. It is a natural 
thing to do, and all natural riders do it. The military man 
who uses a brass stirrup, and the riding -school man or 
those who take him as a model, are the only ones who 
hold the stirrup under the toe or the ball of the foot. 



XLYI 

The enormous bat sometimes worn by the village Arab 
is an outgrowth of a heat and sunshine which even the 
natives cannot endure without protecting their heads. 
The turban has come from the same cause. In all trop- 
ical countries some means of avoiding the danger of sun- 
stroke is universal, though the natives can stand a sun 
which would be fatal to a Frank. In India, Europeans 
who have to be much in the sun often wear a cork or 
quilted cushion inside the coat down the spine from neck 
to waist ; for any part of the vertebral column is sensi- 
tive to excessive heat. The top or front of the head is 
much less so than the base of the brain ; whence the wear- 
ing of the turban on the back of the head or the helmet, 
or the pugree or its equivalent. Animals, from inherited 
ability to resist its dangers, do not often suffer from the 
intense heat, which, in summer, registers, they say, 110° 
Fahrenheit and upwards in the shade, while in the sun one 
may almost do the family cooking. Still, in many places, 
horses, especially if imported from a temperate climate (as 
the Australian waler in India), are better for a hood over 
the head. 

This big hat is quite common in Tunis, is made of 
plaited straw, and is heavier even than a Mexican som- 
brero. The heavier the head-gear the safer the man from 
sunstroke and really the more comfortable. 

The Tunisian countryman rides not a saddle but a pad, 
and this is more generally useful, as it can be employed 



FRENCH IN TUNIS 273 

for a pack better than for riding, but it will serve a turn 
at that. An Arab saddle is uncomfortable enough ; to 
ride a pad is the height of misery. As a rule, it has no 
stirrups, but they are occasionally present, and then not 
fastened but thrown loosely across the pad, which is very 
thick, extremely wide, and frequently has no girth what- 
ever. It runs up over the withers and back beyond the 
coupling. A habit of balancing keeps the rider and pad 
both in place. "With a horse of any spirit girths are in- 
dispensable ; still, a horse will give a good deal of a sli3 r 
without throwing either man or pad, if the man has caught 
the balance-trick. 

Since the French assumed what they call " financial 
control " of Tunis, the roads have been improved pari 
jpassu with the rest of matters. Most of the roads before 
they came were only worn saddle or camel paths ; in the 
interior there is still nothing else. On the coast were a 
few mud roads, able to accommodate the rough vehicles 
occasionally owned by the natives. Along the road there 
is uniformly a mud-bank thrown up from the ditch dug 
on either side to drain it ; a similar bank, for irrigating 
purposes, is put around every enclosed field, and each one 
is crowned by the Barbary fig or prickly-pear cactus. This 
plant grows everywhere, is killed only by frost which al- 
most never comes, and bears in abundance a watery fruit 
almost as big as an apple. This is the one means of stav- 
ing off starvation which the Arab possesses when his crops 
fail, as they sometimes do in seasons of drought. No care 
need be given to the plant, which often grows to be ten 
feet high. 

The Arab's cultivation is the barest apology. All he 
does is to sow his seed in December or January on the 
untouched soil, in among the stubble of last crop, then 
scratch it in with what he calls a plough, but what is only 

18 



274 



SCANT RATIONS 



a curved iron -pointed forked stick, and leave the rest to 
Allah. His crops are not unapt to fail unless there be 
goodly rains. If there is enough, the soil yields plentifully 
by April or May. In the summer there is no rain ; the 
earth is like a furnace seven times heated, and nothing 
can grow. The Barbary fig is then the saving clause in 










TUNISIAN HAT 



the Arab's existence. It is lucky for him that generations 
of scant rations have got him used to eating sparsely. It 
is amazing how little the people of hot climates — unless 
they are of European stock — can get along with. A hand- 
ful of rice three times a day enables the Japanese coolie 
to drag you in his jinrikisha a good forty miles ; or the 
same food will carry the Calcutta coal-heaver through a 



EATING FOR WARMTH 275 

long day's toil. He needs little ; but when he can get it 
he will eat heavily, they say. 

Northern people have the trick of eating for two pur- 
poses — warmth and aliment. The Eskimo consumes enor- 
mous quantities of blubber, but the bulk of it goes to keep 
alive the fire in the human stove, without which he would 
freeze to death. The good half or more of what we North- 
ern Europeans eat is from an inherited tendency to " shovel 
in coal ;" only a small part is assimilated for nourishment ; 
and we carry the trick of eating wherever we go — liver or 
no liver. But so much is not essential in a hot climate, 
and the native population learns to live on a quantity (to- 
say nothing of quality) which to us would be the shortest 
of commons. I have never been able to reduce the av- 
erage food consumed by the Oriental to ounces ; but com- 
pared, say with our army ration, I fancy it would be less 
than half the weight, perhaps less than a third. At the 
same time, when food can be had, the Oriental will vie 
with his Occidental brother in eating ; and the rich are 
often notorious gluttons. The poor make a virtue of ne- 
cessity. 

There is a curious fact bearing on this stoking theory 
which is well known among the lumbermen in our Eastern 
States. The capacity of the horses they use out in camp 
to keep warm is gauged by the amount they can eat and di- 
gest. They are mostly small horses, but tough and rugged 
creatures, of " Morgan " pattern. Unless a horse will eat 
up clean a full bucket of oats three times a day, he is con- 
sidered useless for this w T ork. He will " starve with cold," 
and they send him back to the settlements where he can 
be blanketed. More than half he consumes goes through 
his system merely to supply carbon to warm him ; his di- 
gestive apparatus assimilates such part as is needed for 
alimentation. The Indian pony worries through the winter 



276 LUMBERMAN'S HORSE 

because he is not worked, so that the little he gets goes 
for fuel, and not to replace tissue lost by labor ; and also 
because his ancestry has worried through the same trials, 
and he is their fittest survivor. But the lumberman's 
horse comes of stabled stock — a very different creature — 
and must be kept warm by artificial means, or extra food. 
The Oriental horse partakes of this hot- climate quality 
to a certain extent, and is fed much less than ours ; but, as 
with men, I have been unable to gauge his relative pounds 
of consumption to my satisfaction. In the country you 
can get no reliable information, nor do they feed by meas- 
ure or by rule ; in the cities and in the army they fall par- 
tially into Frank ways, and feed more according to our 
measure. 



XLYII 

When you get far enough away from the e very-day trav- 
eller and come in contact with the "sure-enough," simon- 
pure Arab caliph or sheik, you often find a character 
above reproach, a personal bearing graceful, high-toned, 
and nobly simple, and a courtesy, truth, and kindness which 
are a revelation to us prosaic Anglo-Saxons. I am proud 
to possess the friendship of such a man. He was my host 
— Si Nassour ben El Hadj Salem, Caliph of K'sar H'lal. 
With this gentleman — and a gentle man he was in every 
sense — I spent some days not far from the ruins of ancient 
Thapsus. I had a neat and artistic-looking Arabic letter 
from the French authorities, who, by reason of their finan- 
cial control, will soon transform Tunis, like Algeria, into a 
French province. And it is, no doubt, better for the land, 
save only for the loss of its picturesqueness, and this is a 
loss indeed. The Bey of Tunis has but little real authority 
left, and can devote his abundant leisure to the society 
of his four hundred wives, to whom (or should I say to 
which ?) a new one, usually a Circassian girl, is added by 
each incoming by - monthly steamer from the East. He 
holds court once a week in the old city palace, amuses 
himself by chopping off a few criminals' heads, and again 
retires to his country palace near La Marsa. 

I could not read the letter which was my safe-conduct, 
but some time after a scribe translated it to me in French. 
Here it is in English ; 



278 MY CALIPH 

"Praise to God, the Only. 

"To the honorable, the bous and sheiks of the township of M'Kalta, 
whom may God replenish with happiness! After the salutation and the 
mercy of God, the respectable the Colonel, bearer of these presents, 
comes among you, into your township, to make a trip for his gratifica- 
tion. We recommend him to you most particularly. He will be your 
welcome guest. 

"Written by the humble after -named, under God, Tauchon, Civil 
Controller at Sousa, the 22d Djoumada 2d, 1309. 

"(Sig.) C. Tauchon," and an official seal. 



The date is that of the Hegira. 

Armed with this screed and accompanied by an escort 
of Spahis and an interpreter, I started for the interior. 
As luck would have it, there are two M'Kaltas, one being 
within the jurisdiction of K'sar H'lal. I reached this 
M'Kalta, and presented my letter to the wrong man, as I 
had intended to go to the other M'Kalta ; but the wrong 
man proved to be distinctly the right one, for he was the 
most noted chief in that part of the country, and my safe- 
conduct was of a nature to be respected by every one. 

The caliph received me with literally open arms. He 
was sitting in receipt of custom — the Arabs coining in to 
pay their annual tax on olive-trees, which, though but a 
part of a cent per tree, amounted as a total to a very large 
sum — and gave himself up to me at once, adjourning all 
other business, and bidding several supplicants come on 
the morrow. This struck me as an interruption to busi- 
ness ; but as time is by far the least valuable of the pos- 
sessions of an Arab, and every one was doubly compen- 
sated for any delay by the sight of a Frank — about one 
of whom turned up there every two or three years — the 
act was by no means strained. Coffee was at once served — 
such an aroma of pure Mocha I had never tasted before 
— and we sat down, he and I and some of the sheiks who 



. u 



IN THE INTERIOR 21 9 

remained, cross-legged or upright, as far as to each was 
comfortable. Through the medium of my interpreter's 
Frenche of Stratteforde atte.Bowe, and still worse Ara- 
bic — which, curiously, he could speak, but neither read 
nor write — we talked hour after hour, as other guests, 
lured by the stranger, dropped in to swell the circle. I 
soon saw that I must not expect to regain Sousa and 
catch the steamer I aimed for, and I was correct. But it 
was better so. The whole experience was a rare treat. 
In all my travels I have never met a man more fit for the 
society of princes than Si Nassour ben El Hadj Salem. 
Of tall, full growth, he had a face of great dignity and 
beauty, a smile any woman might envy or fall a victim 
to, manners gracious and courteous and anticipating as 
we Teutonic rustics — more's the pity — so rarely see in 
our soi-disant civilized intercourse, and a bearing every 
inch a — caliph. He had inherited his caliphate from an 
uncle, and was highly considered by the French. 

I spent some days under his care, eating out of the 
same dish — and with my fingers at that, for though my 
interpreter and I had provided ourselves with forks and 
spoons I preferred to imitate my host — sleeping in his own 
soft, hand-made blankets, and journeying to and fro with 
him in the neighborhood to all the places I wished to visit 
in the footsteps of Csesar. He would not let me out of 
his sight, and yet his presence was not for a moment de 
trop, nor his courtesy overmuch. He furnished me with 
his best steed, and a fine fellow he was, and rode with me 
wherever I went or came. 

I had all too numerous opportunities of judging how 
little heed Orientals pay to their own or any one else's 
time. Whenever we would pass through a village, or 
near by some friendly sheik, we were constrained by po- 
lite insistence to come in and break bread. This was not 



280 ARAB FOOD 

a ceremony to be lightly thrust aside, nor indeed easy so 
frequently to go through. These simple folk saw a Frank 
so rarely that I was like an odd specimen of feres natures. 
So little did they know of what lay beyond their horizon 
that even my host had once only been in the City of 
Tunis; scarce another in the country round had even 
been to Sousa. The word Frank had no definite mean- 
ing, except that the Franks dwelt beyond the only sea of 
which they knew — the Mediterranean ; and they recog- 
nized no difference in the French, Germans, Italians, Span- 
iards, English. They had never heard of the Atlantic, 
nor of America. I identified myself by telling them that 
I lived in the land where the cotton-plant grew ; and as 
they all wore cotton goods of English manufacture, this 
was to them a pleasure to know. When I told them, in 
days' journeys of a horse, how far off my country was, 
they "Allahed!" in a marvellous fashion. My watch and 
chain were a great charm to them, and they never tired 
of examining a pair of gossamer rubber shoes I wore, and 
every one wanted to see me stand in a pan of water, and 
then show my dry feet within. The elasticity of a few 
rubber bands I had in my pocket was again a wonder. 
A gross of such would have bought out half M'Kalta. 
They were very children, and yet delightful in their grace, 
dignity, and politeness. The usual repast was seethed 
kid's flesh (not bad eating by-the-way), or lamb, and the 
national dish, koosh-koosh, a sort of wheaten preparation 
which resembles cooked rice, and is eaten with a pepper- 
sauce, was a truly delicious species of curry. The dexter- 
ity in tearing the meat apart with the fingers of one hand 
was marvellous. Once I was offered some native wine 
(vile is no word for it), and when I asked how it came 
that, among sons of the Prophet, there was wine made, 
they laughingly said that, of course, no one drank it ; and 




MY FRIEND THE CALIPH 



A GENTLEMAN 283 

yet there was a good deal made and sold. When they 
learned that their guest had lost his leg in battle, and 
could not sit cross-legged, they absolved me with great 
unction from the position usually demanded by polite 
rules, and made me very comfortable, though I thought I 
was narrowly watched to ascertain that I was not prevar- 
icating, as the fact seemed inexplicable to them. 

I could write a book anent my Arab friends, but must 
refrain. Suffice it that I was entertained like a prince, 
and that I grew fond of my courtly host as I sincerely 
believe he grew of me. On parting he kissed me on both 
cheeks, called me brother, bent his forehead to the 
ground, and told me that his head was at my lifelong 
service; conjured Allah to see me back to my own roof- 
tree (ridge-pole he called it in Arabic), and placing his 
right hand first on his heart and then to his lips, bade me 
what I think was an honestly regretted farewell. We had 
become good friends, and I hope to welcome him some 
day at home — for Si Eassour ben El Hadj Salem, little 
travelled as he is, thinks of coming to America in this 
year of grace, on an errand too long to detail, but which 
proves both his enterprise and intelligence, and his care 
for his people's welfare. 

I would have given much to get a picture of this caliph 
as he sat his fine Arabian. I can but give a distant 
approach to it, in the photograph of another man of 
that ilk. 

As it happened, my friend had several good horses ; but 
it does not follow because a man is an Arab and a caliph, 
and rich besides, that he has any at all — except for ordi- 
nary transportation or the use of his servants. He may 
prefer camels or asses. Some sheiks never leave the place 
where they hold sway, never move about, and need horses 
as little as a knowledge of Greek. My caliph, to tell the 



284 GENTLE JUSTICE 

truth, rarely rode ; but he could ride and did know a good 
horse. 

One day the caliph asked me to sit beside him while 
he held court. I did so, and was witness to a number of 
Oriental scenes of strongly dramatic interest. The usual 
litigants were at odds about land or money matters, but 
the decision of the caliph, after a hearing, generally 
about a half-hour long, seemed to be readily accepted — as 
of course it had to be. The quiet, earnest attention and 
final summing up of the caliph were in striking con- 
trast to the voluble fervor of the applicants ; I could 
see whence came his very great influence. 

One case was that of a father, whom his son, some 
seventeen or eighteen years old, obstinately refused to 
obey. The father besought the caliph to compel his son 
to do his bidding, the son complained of his father's treat- 
ment. The father opened his case with apparent violence 
(Oriental fury, however, often goes for naught), and the son 
was equally angry, but sullen withal. The caliph had the 
right to punish the son in any way, by imprisonment in 
chains or stripes ; but after listening attentively to all each 
had to say, he held up his hand to end the evidence, and 
everything in the room at once was still. His face was a 
beautiful picture. He began in a low, sweet, but rapid 
voice — all Orientals speak rapidly — dwelling on some of 
the long vowels in a musical tone as delicious as Salvini's 
Italian, and with an utterance which ran from a deep, 
rich base to the high soprano, yet perfectly natural withal. 
The son, I was told, had been extremely guilty, according 
to Tunisian notions; but the caliph sought other means 
than severity to accomplish his end. His Avords were 
addressed alternately to father and son, and the effect 
on each as he proceeded was marked. He spoke with 
evident authority, and yet with a persuasive tone, which 



A PENITENT SON 285 

at times was pleading, at times convincing. As he went 
on I could see the lad's face soften — a quiver flew at 
times across his mouth ; as he had come in I thought him 
ill-looking — I found he was really a handsome lad. 

The caliph went on, plainly telling the youth how he 
had failed in duty and common-sense alike, and explaining 
to him that where lay his filial piety there lay also his 
present and future happiness. I turned from one to the 
other, for each was a study of character of extreme in- 
terest. JSTot a word of all the judge said could I under- 
stand ; but the tone was such as to yield the hearer its 
closest import. In a moment more came the climax. The 
lad had been swallowing his emotion in great gulps, and 
now, with an outburst of sobs, he broke into a flood of 
tears, threw his arms around his expectant father's neck, 
and wept audibly. Recovering himself he turned to the 
caliph, said a few low-spoken words, and waited for what 
more he had to say. Bidding him continue on his good 
resolution, the caliph waved an end to the matter, and 
father and son left the court-room with arms around each 
other's shoulders. I have rarely been witness to a more 
impressive scene, and the dignity, graceful diction, and 
beautiful voice of the caliph have lingered with me ever 
since. 

But I am afraid that the title to this volume has been 
given amiss. It should have been "Yarns of a Globe- 
trotter, and, Incidentally, Horseflesh." I must strive to 
keep to my subject. 



XLYIII 

Horses must be averaged. It will not do to select the 
exceptional horse for description lest the reader fall into 
the assumption that all other horses resemble him, or, at 
least, that the majority do so. This is, indeed, not entirely 
an error. In the Orient all horses have some of the marks 
of Arabian blood. There is a singular beauty to some of 
the points of the Arabian which, even in the commonest 
stock, never gets quite lost. You rarely see a horse with- 
out one or more of these, and an odd specimen will now 
and then crop out among the lowly bred country horses 
which has all the points of some noble ancestor. Heredity 
is an obstreperous thing to deal with. In families which, 
ever so far back, have had some trace of negro blood, 
perhaps quite forgotten, it is said that a Guinea-black 
baby will occasionally turn up, to the great distress of all 
concerned and the suspicion of many. 

Among the Arabs, barring the desert tribes, it is, as 
elsewhere, the rule that only swells have fine beasts. So 
it is with us ; and after seeing many horses in many lands, 
I must give it as my opinion that the " Kentucky farmer " 
rides, on the average, a far finer, better trained, and abler 
horse than the Arab sheik. Moreover, there are — as I 
have before observed — more splendid specimens of horse- 
flesh on the breeding-farms of America than there are in 
any Oriental studs, quite apart from the greater size of 
our thorough-bred. 

By -the- way, this same Kentucky farmer is an odd type 



KENTUCKY FARMERS 



287 



of soil toiler. lie owns a fine old homestead (a country 
gentleman's "place " or " estate" in reality, but he calls it 
a " farm "), perhaps inherited for generations, and boasts 
acres as broad and beautiful as an English park. He 
gets into the saddle after a decidedly late breakfast for 
a farmer, rides around to visit his crops and the stock, 
gives a few directions to his headmen, and then canters 
off into — let us say Lexington, for a drink and a chat and 
billiards, or some other amusement with similar farmers, 
and God gives the increase. On work of the easiest the 
Kentucky Blue Grass farmer grows rich. Just think of 
the toil and moil of our poor New England farmers, your 
ancestors and mine, good friend, and for what % Well, for 




TUNISIAN WITH TWO-TEAR-OLD BARB 



288 POINTS OF ARABIAN 

the strength of loin, the unclouded brain, and the iron will 
which has begotten and bred the sturdiest, most intel- 
ligent, and most enterprising race the sun has ever shone 
upon! The New England farmer has raised men and 
women ; as for crops — why, they are crop enough. 

Some well -qualified judges maintain that the English 
thorough-bred, by generations of breeding exclusively for 
speed has lost bone and structural strength, and it is sug- 
gested that a cross with the old Arabian desert blood 
would be a benefit. It is true that the one -mile speed 
has grown relatively beyond the five, ten, or twenty mile 
speed ; but this does not necessarily mean that the endur- 
ance of the thorough-bred has decreased. It takes — teste 
" Ten Broeck " — as much endurance, in a certain fashion, 
for a horse to run a mile in 1.39f , as it does for him to run 
four miles in 7.15f, the average of the latter per mile be- 
ing 1.49 ; but to breed for short bursts of very high speed 
has perhaps a tendency to overdevelop the greyhound 
type. And no doubt there is a certain weediness in some 
families of racers. Be this as it may, it cannot be claimed 
that the Southern saddle-horse lacks bone. Many fine- 
bred ones are up to great weight, and most have large 
round barrels, and by no means too slender a skeleton. 
They are as nearly perfect as may be for saddle (not rac- 
ing) speed, for carrying ability, and for gaits and endur- 
ance. The racer is quite another horse, but he, too, has 
more framework than his English cousin. 

There are a number of points which must be granted 
to the Arabian. Eliminating the wretched little country 
horse, of small value because overworked and underfed, 
the average horse of good stock has excellent bone and an 
exceptionally well-built structure. The shoulder has a pe- 
culiarly fine slope ; the back is very short above, and the 
line is very long below ; the reach from top of rump to 



. 



PROUD SHEIKS 289 

hough is extra long ; the neck rises just as it should from the 
withers ; the head is put on just right ; the legs and feet 
cannot be criticised. The superlatives are purposely em- 
ployed. Moreover, there is a certain ease and grace of 
movement that is essentially Arabian, which comes of a 
skeleton put together on good principles, and then well 
clad with muscle and sinew. On the other hand, while 
our long, lanky, bony, often somewhat ungainly performer 
lacks the Arabian's symmetry of looks and movement, he 
impresses you with the ability to run and repeat, to carry 
you through to the death, which even the best horse in the 
Orient does not convey. The line Arabian is singularly 
handsome ; there is no form of words w T hich will explain 
the effect he has on the horse-lover who is attracted by 
the artistic as well as the " horsy " points. He unques- 
tionably possesses grit and endurance, but I believe that 
in losing some of his grace we have gained in stamina in 
stock of equal grades, while our e very-day teamster, coach- 
er, and business horse can readily discount him by his supe- 
rior weight ; and this weight, while it may, coupled to our 
hard roads, be more trying to legs and feet, does not ap- 
pear to have deteriorated the useful qualities of our animal. 

The illustration show T s the size of no end of colts in 
daily use in the East. This was a two-year old — we should 
call it a yearling from its looks, and weedy at that. Still 
the colt was able to do a good day's work ; and though 
such a little creature may be much abused, his legs and 
feet w T ill stand up under it in a marvellous manner, ex- 
plicable only by the fact that his ancestors, for a thousand 
generations, have stood on the ground out - of - doors in- 
stead of in ammonia-soaked stalls. The rider appears tall ; 
in truth, he was but about five feet eight. The colt was 
little above thirteen hands. 

The term sheik in the Orient is about as universal as 

19 




A TUNISIAN SHEIK 



cap'n or jedge in most country districts in our part of 
the world, though military distinction is not colloquially 
conferred on account of the number of chimneys a man's 
house may have, as it is said to be south of Mason and 
Dixon's line; there are few chimneys. The sheik before 
us boasts no such architectural luxuries. But though he 
may live in a hut of rushes and his women may do the 
cooking alfresco, rain or shine, he is wont to own a good 
horse. And he is a proud fellow, this penniless sheik ; 
proud of his religion, proud of his nationality, proud of his 
lineage — almost as proud as he is of the lineage of his high- 



LAZY SHEIKS 291 

bred mare, on the feats of whose forebears he will descant 
by the hour and multiply by three the miles they may have 
done between sun and sun. He is rarely separated from 
his old flintlock, perhaps the most harmless fire-arm which 
exists — to the enemy. He does nothing for a living ex- 
cept to loaf ; his inherited dignity — for was not his great- 
uncle a sheik before him? — forbids him to work. He 
owns a few olive-trees, some little flocks and herds, an 
ass, and a horse or two , his women cultivate a small gar- 
den-patch and an acre or so of wheat; the prickly -pear 
and date-palm are there at need; and if he can worry 
through the distress of the few rainy weeks without soak- 
ing into pulp, God's sunshine and fresh air are his for the 
rest of the year. He is content with little to eat ; gener- 
ations of sparse food have robbed the poor Arab of any 
semblance of gluttony; strong drink is prohibited by 
the Koran, and, curiously, the injunction is wont to be 
obeyed ; but give him the long daylight for loafing, and 
anything on four legs to carry him, and he is happy. He 
little reeks what his wives and daughters are. They, poor 
souls — stay! they have no souls according to his belief, 
and may not even go into the mosque to pray. " Why 
should they pray, forsooth, having no souls to pray for ?" 
he will ask you ; they, poor creatures ! live in the reflect- 
ed happiness of their lord. 



XLIX 

When we cross the Libyan desert — which from its west- 
erly limits is usually done by a prosaic Mediterranean trip 
back to Malta or Italy, and thence to Alexandria, rather 
than aboard a "ship of the desert," for it is easy to go 
around and all but impossible to go across this merciless 
waste — we come to a more marked type of the so-called 
Arabian than we find in either Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, 
or Tripoli. The first thing which strikes the horseman 
on reaching Egypt is the high -carried tail. The close- 
hugged tail which to such a degree disfigures the other- 
wise admirable mount on the west of the Libyan desert is 
here replaced by the fine upright haunch and high -set 
tail which we have so long admired in art. The whole 
bearing of the animal is altered by this single feature. 
One would scarcely credit the change. It is not the arti- 
ficial tail of commerce, produced among civilized (?) na- 
tions at such a cost in pain and sacrifice in looks for the 
delectation of ultra-fashionables ; it is the same fine tail 
you see bred for in Kentucky, set on a haunch which none 
but the Arabian can boast. The reason why the tail of 
the Spanish horse is carried so close is that he is of Moor- 
ish origin. It is, perhaps, impossible to determine the ex- 
act line of demarcation in race or breeding which sep- 
arates the close-carried from the high-set tail, or to give 
the rationale of either ; at the Libyan desert is the geo- 
graphical line of separation. It suffices to call the horses 
on the west of the desert Barbs ; those on the east Ara- 




ARABIAN POLO-PONIES, CAIRO 



bians. The so-called Goclolphin Arabian, one of the 
progenitors of the English thorough - bred, was really a 
Barb, and his pictures show this low round croup and 
tail. He could not have come from the Syrian desert. 
The tail dates back many hundred equine generations. 
In his day an " Arabian " or a " Turk " meant any Ori- 
ental horse. 

A low-carried tail is sometimes climatic. I have been 
told by horse-breeders on our Western plains that if for 
two or three generations the horses have been compelled 
to turn their backs to the winter blizzards and hug their 
tails from cold the best of natural tails will droop. As 
a rule, a severe climate produces a low tail, a hot climate 
a high one. But this does not quite meet the case of the 
Barb. Perhaps the Arabian sires which went originally 
from the Syrian desert to the Barbary States were too few 
to eradicate in the native race they impregnated the low 
tail it had, and which most "horses of the country" have ; 
they were unable radically to change horses for which as 
a race nothing had been done in the way of breeding, 



294 GOOD AND BAD POINTS 

and which during some months each year had been obliged 
for centuries in the uplands or in the foot-hills of the Atlas 
range to turn their tails to the chill blasts of the rainy 
season. 

The horse came into Egypt with the Hyksos, or Shep- 
herd Kings, less than seventeen hundred years before our 
era. Previous to that time asses were the only specimens 
of the genus equus. No horse figures on the earlier mon- 
uments of Egypt. The modern horse of Egypt is a dif- 
ferent animal, of more recent importation, but also from 
the Shepherd Kings of to-day, the pastoral princes of the 
desert. This modern breed has a curiously uniform type. 
You see them of all sizes, from the polo-pony to the heavy 
wheeler, but the type remains. If mixed, the strong Ara- 
bian blood predominates in the look of the offspring. In 
other countries horses vary both in size and type. You 
have everything, from a Sheltie to a Percheron, each dis- 
tinct in kind as well as size ; there are several distinct 
races. In Egypt the type is constant ; there is but one 
race. The head is small, the face intelligent and mild, 
but not generally as fine and bony as one anticipates. 
The perfect head is as rare as the perfect horse. The 
neck is rather short and full in front, with good crest and 
distinctly fine throttle ; by no means as clean as the thor- 
ough-brecl's, but much more neatly turned. The crest is 
full, the withers low, but the shoulders sloping ; the barrel 
not quite as round as one would like, but well coupled to 
a nearly perfect haunch. Looked at from front or rear, 
the horse has not as much breadth as fills the eye, but one 
sees far fewer weedy - looking horses than west of the 
desert. The legs and feet are as good as can be. Even 
the old broken-down hacks have no windgalls. Nor does 
one often see a lame horse. Infinite stress is, among the 
Arabs, laid on good legs. As the Arabian legs are uni- 



1 




A BIG JUMP 297 

formly good, whenever a horse shows blemishes or strains 
in them he is considered unsafe to buy. With us a horse 
with a few wind-puffs or a splint or two is by no means 
to be condemned. The Arabians rarely interfere, but 
often overreach when taught to trot, as they now are by 
the English, or for the English by the Arabs. The foot is 
neither too much like the mule's nor too flat. It is round, 
rather high, and with naturally a good wide frog. That 
horror of our climate, scratches, are not often seen in the 
dry air of Egypt, but the practice of hobbling often scores 
the fetlocks permanently. The shoe of the Arab horse in 
Egypt is the plate with a small hole in the middle — a 
bungling apology for a shoe. In Cairo the European shoe 
is gaining in use ; among the Arabs the old plate still pre- 
vails, but it is less bad than among the Syrian Bedouins. 
The cut shows a very fair type of the average Arabian 
bought by the English officers or residents in Cairo. For 
his inches he is hard to beat. The officer's seat is just a 
trifle long, but excellent. It is a hunting rather than a 
military seat, bar toes. 

The Arabian is unquestionably good as a goer ; but in 
a country where there is neither fence, hedge, ditch, nor 
other division of the fields, we can scarcely expect a horse 
to jump. There is, however, a leap recorded to have been 
taken by one Ragh-Ap {alias Amin Bey) at the time of 
the massacre of the Mamelukes, which in these days of 
prize-jumping is certainly worth a notice, whether credited 
or not. In order to escape from the massacre, this man 
headed his Arabian for the edge of the cliff where now 
stands the Citadel of Cairo. The noble animal never 
paused, but conscious of his master's peril took the leap, a 
most prodigious one, and landed — the fact is well authen- 
ticated by the footprints in the stone shown by the pious 
and horse -loving Moslem of to-day — eighty feet below, 



298 NOT "STUNNERS" 

and something over a quarter of a mile distant. What, 
after that, becomes of our paltry seven feet three of horse- 
show timbre? 

By -the -way, speaking of the fenceless condition of 
the country, did it ever occur to you what a queerly 
shaped land Egypt is? Fancy a country one thousand 
miles long by scarcely ten miles wide. And yet this is 
the shape of agricultural Egypt from Cairo to the first 
cataract. The rest of the land is mere desert. The whole 
country is likened to an open lotus (the Delta) with a long 
stem and one single bud, the Fayum. 

The Egyptian Arabian is fed on barley, beans, and 
clover -hay — which is sweet and abundant in the Nile 
region — or the green clover for the early two or three 
months of the year. The first growth is cut down and fed 
green; it is a sort of " spring medicine," our Hood's Sarsa- 
parilla ; the second is allowed to grow up for hay. 

The average of the Arabian saddle-beasts here as else- 
where is undeniably high. The variety of type which 
we see in the well-bred saddle-horse at home cannot be 
found; but that the Arabian is serviceable and satis- 
factory as a mount is not to be questioned. His good- 
nature is uniform, his gaits are fair, and he can stay. I 
have heard it said by English people that you cannot run 
him as far and fast as a good hack at home ; but this is, I 
take it, a matter of feed rather than endurance. The saddle- 
beast held by a sa'is, or outrunner, is the type of a lighter 
kind of horse, not up to quite so much weight. And yet 
he will surprise you by his activity under two hundred 
pounds. But while, in the streets of Cairo, or on the 
Gezireh drive, one sees plenty of neat -turned saddle- 
beasts whose lines and action are very taking, it is rare 
that one is attracted by a " stunner " — by a horse all life, 
all action, all ambition. I have seen vastly more splendid 



FEW MARES SEEN 301 

saddle-beasts in Lexington than in Cairo, though the latter 
is a capital with a splendid court and a large garrison, and 
many times the size of the little Kentucky city. I have 
owned more than one horse who could, in gait, style, and 
all saddle qualities, outshine anything I have seen in the 
Orient. This sounds like boasting ; but I do not intend 
to exaggerate. My "Jewell," when he was at his best, 
was not only as handsome as anything I have seen in the 
Orient, but he looked as if he. had the pluck and ability to 
go over a house — an appearance which most Arabians 
lack. Relative endurance is hard to determine. Each 
class of horse has enough. One never sees the long, fine 
thorough-bred in Egypt. It is more of a chunk, with per- 
fect legs and feet and all-round good points. The type of 
"Longfellow," "Ten Broeck," "Saunterer," "Fisherman" 
is never seen among the Arabians. The latter has stout- 
er bone and more flesh, but less size, less accentuated 
points, less " do and die " look. 

Stallions alone are in use — though the Bedouins prize 
their mares. One wonders what becomes of the mares. 
In Algeria and Tunis one sees them working in the fields ; 
in Egypt one does not see them at all. As the habit of 
gelding is unknown — or has been until the English occu- 
pation, and is rare to-day — it is not convenient to work 
both sexes together; and though I have been told that 
the Libyan Arab prefers the horse, it is much more prob- 
able that the mares are kept for breeding and the stallions 
mostly sent to the cities for sale, as is the case in Syria. 
I found it so — at least, wherever I went. If a man wants 
to raise horses he must not sell his mares. And all nomad 
Arabs breed. Iso doubt if one went out among the 
breeders in Egypt he would find nothing but mares and 
an occasional stud. 

The saddle is much less marked in its make-up than 



302 SADDLES 

west of the Libyan desert. It has but a slight pommel 
and cantle, and it is by no means uncouth. Many of 
them are less individual than the saddles on our plains. It 
is evident that the Great Desert is a distinct boundary in 
many matters equine. 



An Arab for his own use trains his horse to rack or 
amble, canter or gallop. He abhors the trot — which to 
him is the mark of the slavery of wheels. If a colt shows 
an inclination to trot, he hobbles him with a rope from 
his fore to his hind fetlock on either side, to force him to 
pace. But the Arab does not know the fast rack, or 
single-foot. The only people I am acquainted with who 
have developed the so-called artificial paces of the horse 
in a scientific way are our Southerners, though the Cretans 
have the gait beyond any other Orientals. In Kentucky 
a horse will often running-walk, rack, and trot perfectly, 
and of course canter and gallop, with a crisp performance 
of each gait. The Arabian has but an amble or a slow 
rack — never more than one of these gaits. When taught 
to trot, in which he never excels, his other gaits appear to 
be lost. I once examined a number of horses for sale in 
Cairo, averaging thirty to fifty pounds sterling each in 
value, which price would be the equivalent of four to six 
hundred dollars here. I was looked on as a hona fide 
purchaser, and the traders were very eager to sell me an 
animal. The horses were all led out, mounted, and, to my 
surprise, shown me on the trot. When I asked for a 
canter, or a rack, they stared at me as a vara avis. Here 
was a white man — a Frank — who did not want a trotter 
for the saddle ! Allah be praised ! But I also found that 
the training of each beast to trot had utterly ruined his. 
other gaits. He was all mixed up. Even his trot was not 



304 SOUTHERN GAITS 

true, and he was uncertain in his rack or amble, and hard 
to start into a canter. It would be a ticklish thing to bring 
him back to his fine saddle paces. All those that I saw 
and tried were what you might call a very likely-looking 
but poor lot of a good type. For the saddle each was 
spoiled — except to sell to an Englishman, or to some 
imitator of the English style. And of these Cairo to-day is 
full. The Arab or Turkish swells who are thrown in with 
the English have taken to their ways. The native official 
will ride his horse on an overreaching trot which makes 
one's teeth grit, when if left to his natural gaits the horse 
would move as smoothly as a meadow brook. 

It is common to use the term " artificial gaits " in re- 
ferring to the running- walk or rack. I have employed 
it because it is generally understood. A new word ought 
to be coined. Suppose we say Southern gaits. It is 
absurd to talk of artificial gaits when, as I have before 
pointed out, nine-tenths of all animals belonging to the 
horse tribe in the world thus travel, and that without 
training. The rack was understood generations ago in 
England. One of the earliest writers on the horse, old 
Blundeville to wit, speaks of the Spanish jennet, of which 
there were many brought to England especially for ladies' 
use, as going li neither trot nor amble, but a comelie kind 
of going like the Turke" (Arab) — i.e., as going some- 
thing midway between trot and amble, either a rack or 
a running- walk. It is more natural for a horse to rack 
than to trot. Don't smile. This dictum is sound. I am 
referring, of course, solely to saddle -beasts. When one 
puts a load after a horse the trot is no doubt a better 
gait, but it has to come by training or inheritance. 
The wild horse everywhere gallops, or slows down into 
what we call a canter, which is, however, not the real 
canter, but a short, broken gallop. The park canter is 



THE TROT FOR TRACTION 305 

quite another thing. A wild horse may now and then 
jog — i.e., go a short trot ; but he will be quite as apt to 
pace, and if he is slowing clown from a gallop to a walk 
he is much more apt to rack, because the rack is more 
nearly intermediate, in the sequence of feet, between 
gallop and walk than is the trot. This fact is not gen- 
erally known, because most people do not recognize a rack 
when they see it. 

I refrain for the moment from going into the tech- 
nicalities of the sequence of the horse's feet in the 
various gaits ; but if any one will study this thing from 
practice and from instantaneous photography, he will 
see that the true trot is less allied to the one gait every 
one acknowledges to be natural — the gallop — than the 
rack. 

As I said, for drawing loads the trot is the thing, be- 
cause a horse is using two feet at a time, and is by so 
much stronger ; but if }^ou want the neat, quick, crisp ac- 
tion which alone makes the highest saddle qualities, you 
call for a style of going to which the rack is naturally 
adapted, while the trot is not. A single illustration will 
serve to show my point. If you are cantering at a good 
rate along the highway and want to slacken speed — as to 
allow a carriage to pass across your path, or for any other 
purpose — you cannot pull down to a trot and start into a 
canter again without a distinct interruption of gaits — a 
bumping, to be plain about it. But you can pull down to 
a rack, and bound out again into a canter, without the 
slightest perceptible change of the horse's rhythmic move- 
ment. Or, again, if from a lively canter you pull down to 
a walk through a trot, you have a certain amount of bump- 
ing while the horse is jogging ; but if you teach your nag 
to come back to a walk through a rack — i.e., from canter 
to rack, and from rack to walk, you have not the remotest 

20 



306 THE RACK NATURAL 

semblance of irregularity. No argument is needed to show 
why ; the gaits themselves prove the case. 

I maintain that the rack — or, to employ our new coin- 
age — all Southern gaits are natural. You will pardon my 
recurrence to this subject, but it is a part of my text, you 
see, and I like to ring the changes on it. When one is in 
the pulpit, he has the right, I believe, to go back to his 
text, even at the risk of occasional repetitions. You will 
find that I only partially repeat myself, and I propose 
that no equine sinner shall remain immersed in his iniqui- 
ty for lack of proper instruction. I say the rack is natu- 
ral. Every donkey in the East, and in all European coun- 
tries where he is used, racks as a matter of course ; so does 
every horse that is ridden in the Orient — a fact I have al- 
ready pointed out. You may say that this does not prove 
the case. Strike, but listen ! 

No one will deny that the walk is the first of the natu- 
ral gaits. Now, if you take a young horse, who does not 
come of strict trotting ancestry, and has not been broken 
to harness, and after training him to a light, elastic, fast 
walk, will push him on to a sharper gait, he will not fall 
into a jog-trot ; he will amble or rack. If you let him go 
a careless, humdrum, snaffle -bridle gait, unworthy of a 
saddle-beast, he may perhaps fall into a jog; but that is 
not my point ; I am talking of a well - poised horse, not a 
wheeler. Again, even if your horse is on a jog-trot, if 
you will use whip or spur to unsettle him, and at the 
same time not allow him head enough to gallop, he will 
fall into an amble or rack. Even a horse trotting in har- 
ness, if frightened, or struck with the whip, or jerked up 
with the reins, will fall into a rack. Why, then, is the 
rack artificial ? It will not do to call it so. If the Eng- 
lish made as good saddle-beasts as they make hunters or 
racers, we might subscribe to their opinion, and allow the 






THE TROT ARTIFICIAL 307 

rack to be called artificial. But the truth is that, all over 
the world, riders who excel in pure saddle-work not spe- 
cially diverted to some one object — as hunting is to gallop- 
ing and jumping obstacles, or racing to pure speed — but 
with whom the mere riding for business or pleasure is the 
object, and who aim at the greatest ease, handiness, and 
ability in their horses, employ the amble or rack as the prin- 
cipal gait, the canter next. Unquestionably, quoad the 
saddle-horse, the rack must be called natural, the trot the 
artificial gait. If I die before I have converted the world 
to this my opinion, let it be written on my tombstone — 
but that is another story. 



LI 



To prose for a paragraph on the technical part of the 
case. You may skip this if you like ; it is technical, not 
chatty. But if you will study it out it will repay you. 
The gaits of the horse are : 

1. The simple walk, in which to the eye one hind-foot 
moves out first, followed by the alternate fore-foot ; then 
the other hind-foot followed by its alternate, not at exact- 
ly equal intervals. If you listen to a walking-horse's hoof- 
beats, you will find the four beats to be rather in sets of 
twos. This gait varies from two and a half to four and a 
half miles an hour, and gives a very slight forward and 
back swaying to the saddle. 

2. The running- walk. The sequence of the steps in this 
is the same as in the simple walk, but the horse has a 
brisker, more elastic motion, and appears to put more life 
into his gait ; each foot is put down and taken up quicker; 
he will go up to five and a half or six miles an hour on it, 
and the saddle has a slight up and down, but very easy, 
feel to it. 

3. The amble, which is a slow pace, in which the feet 
on the near side come down exactly together, followed 
by those on the off side at equal intervals. The saddle 
feels very easy, with a slight swaying motion from side to 
side. 

4. The trot, in which the diagonal feet come clown ex- 
actly together — i.e., the near fore and off hind, and the off 
fore and near hind at equal intervals. When slow, this is 



VARIOUS GAITS 309 

a jog ; when fast, a flying trot. They only differ in degree ; 
but on the flying trot the horse is propelled so vigorously 
that between steps he is sometimes in the air, while in the 
jog and slow trot one set of feet is always on the ground. 
The feel of the saddle is a bump up and down, to avoid 
which on a five-mile trot and upwards one rises to each 
alternate step. On a jog you cannot rise ; to a very rapid 
trot one need not always do so. Owing to a difference in 
conformation or strength of the hind-legs, some horses are 
easier when you rise to one rather than the other leg. 

5. The pace, which is a fast amble. When at speed 
at a pace, as in the flying trot, the horse is often in the 
air between steps. The feel of the saddle is sometimes a 
bump, sometimes a sway from side to side, differing in 
individuals. 

6. The rack, which is a gait half-way between the trot 
and pace. Here the feet follow each other at half in- 
tervals, each one coming down separately. In the trot 
and pace the hoof-beats sound " one, two ! one, two !" In 
the rack they sound "one, two, three, four! one, two, 
three, four!" in the same length of time— four beats in- 
stead of two for the same speed, each hind-foot following 
its fore-foot at a half interval, instead of coming down 
with it. The saddle is perfectly quiet under you ; the gait 
is the very poetry of comfort. Speed, six to fifteen miles 
an hour ; or, as a rarity, a three-minute gait. 

7. The canter is an irregular gait, by most people de- 
scribed as a slow gallop ; but it has, mechanically speak- 
ing, not much in common with the latter gait. An Eng- 
lishman will describe his thorough-bred as cantering twelve 
miles an hour, but he is really going a three-beat, or hand- 
gallop. If you call a five or six mile gait a canter you 
cannot call a twelve-mile gait a canter, for the progression 
of the animal is mechanically different. I am not seeking 



310 A CANTERBURY TALE 

a quarrel with the nomenclature, for in many places a 
canter is called a " lope," and a running- walk a " run," or 
a fast rack a " single-foot." Localized epithets always ex- 
ist. What I mean is that the slow and fast gaits are not 
alike, and should have different names ; and " canter " has 
for ages been applied to the slower gait. I am inclined to 
wander a bit here, but — 

Well, the " canter " (which is of Canterbury origin, and 
perchance the " Wei nyne-and-twenty in a companye " fell 
into a canter at the end of each tale) is a gait much more 
"artificial" than the rack. The gallop is natural. The 
canter proper must be produced by training in every in- 
dividual. A horse will naturally fall to racking ; he never 
will fall into a canter untaught — fresh proof that the slur 
on Southern gaits is incorrect. The " Kentucky wriggle " 
is a pure gait. 

The canter is produced by reining a horse back from a 
three-beat gallop. Individuals differ much, and the same 
horse differs often in the performance of the canter. But 
every one who has ridden it remembers the feel as of a sort 
of pause at one period of the stride. Well, at that mo- 
ment three feet are on the ground, say, if leading with the 
right shoulder, the off hind, and the near and off fore-feet, 
while the near hind one has just left it. The off fore-foot 
is the last to come down, and is thrown forward where 
you can see it over the horse's shoulder ; and because its 
action is more pronounced than that of the other feet, the 
horse is said to be leading with that foot. This hoof -beat 
is the very pronounced three of the "one, two, three!" 
sound of the canter. Just before the time this leading-off 
fore-foot comes down, the near hind-foot goes up ; then 
the off hind and near fore, quite or nearly together ; and 
then from the leading-off fore -foot the horse goes into 
the air, and you feel the rise in the gait. This is followed 



THE GALLOP 311 

by the near hind-foot coming down, again to be followed 
by the off hind and near fore feet, which completes the 
stride to our beginning. Many photographs of cantering 
horses do not look like a canter at all. The most common 
one shows all but the leading foot on the ground at the 
same moment. 

8. The three-beat, or hand-gallop, in which the hoof- 
beats sound " one, two, three, pause ; one, two, three, 
pause." Assuming the horse to lead with the off shoulder, 
the one is from the near hind-foot, the two from the off 
hind and near fore, which come down together, and the 
three from the off fore-foot. But the gait is too rapid for 
the horse ever to be at any one time on three legs ; hence 
the difference from the canter. 

9. The run, or four- beat gallop. This sounds like 
" one, two, three, four, pause ; one, two, three, four, pause." 
When the pause occurs the horse is in the air at the end 
of his stride and is gathering all his legs under him for 
the next one. His four legs come down exactly like four 
spokes of a wheel; but as there is not, after the four 
spokes have done their work, a continuous succession of 
spokes to sustain the weight of the body and propel it, the 
horse pauses from leg action and gathers them under him 
for four new propulsions, or rather has been gradually 
doing so with each leg after it has completed its quasi 
spoke-work. The hoof-beats, after the pause, come (if the 
right shoulder be leading) near hind, off hind, near fore, 
off fore, at exactly equal intervals ; then, during the next 
pause, the horse, which has risen into the air from his off 
fore-foot, reaches out his near hind-foot and puts it to the 
ground for a new stride. Nothing so well describes his ac- 
tion as four spokes of a wheel. If you think a moment, you 
will see that the horse must first plant the hind-foot, or rear- 
most spoke, and must end with the fore, or foremost spoke. 



312 NOMENCLATURE 

By-the-way, talking of nomenclature, did you ever reflect, 
after you and your best friend had been at loggerheads for 
an hour or two over some political or social or theological 
or personal problem, and had been about ready to order 
pistols for two and coffee for one, that, after all, you 
were of the same opinion, but that you had been misun- 
derstanding each other's terms and thus misinterpreting 
each other's ideas ; in other words, that when he said A 
and you said X, you really meant the same thing, but had 
a different term to describe it ? Unless you have both 
been taught in the same school, you must first sit down 
and find out what you mean by the phrases or words you 
use, before you know whether you have anything to dis- 
cuss or not. 




LII 



Let us again, for a moment, leave the proud horse of the 
desert, the favorite of the sheik, the pampered but noble 
companion of the Arab, and turn to his patient, pathetic 
cousin, the ass. Oh for the pen of a ready writer to draw 
up an eulogium on this humble martyr ! "What panegyric 
shall do him justice? There is nothing of his breed — 
there is no animal in the service of man — that so nearly 
personifies the cardinal virtues. He has positively but 
one weakness, and that is a failure to understand music 
as we do. He cannot sing to the contentment of our 
classical ear. But, despite even this, the more I see of 
the ass the more sincere is my respect for him. I would 
fain erect an altar to him and burn incense at his shrine. 
He may not bsar his master company to an equal sky, 
but surely he deserves a heaven of his own. Why, when 
he does such uncomplaining, never-ending work, impious 
man should not hold him at his true value it is hard to 
conceive. His toil is remunerated with the meanest food ; 
his truly heroic efforts are rewarded by a constant shower 
of blows, by a constant call for greater effort. In Egypt 
a camel -load of green clover — a quarter -ton — sells for 
almost a dollar of our money ; a donkey -load for forty 
cents ; and the camel weighs five or six times as much as 
the donkey. In other words, the " marvellous" camel 
bears but one-third his own weight, the donkey four-fifths 
of his. If you overload the camel he will growl his pro- 
test ; he will refuse to rise. Whoever heard of the ass re- 



314 THE ASS IN ANTIQUITY 

fusing the heaviest of burdens, even twice in proportion 
that of the camel? To whom shall we award the palm? 
Unreasoning master, it is thine own turgid soul that is 
burdened with the vices thou imputest to thy humble, dili- 
gent, uncomplaining servant ! Talk not of thy Ten Com- 
mandments, miserable man ! Thy ass heedeth thy law as 
thou never obeyest the Decalogue ! 

Every one remembers the curious, protesting cry of the 
ass-driver in Italy. Its tone — "A ah !" — is a constant re- 
proach : " Do, for Heaven's sake, go faster, you poky, lazy 
beast !" when the brave little fellow is struggling on with 
a load under which no other animal God ever made could 
possibly stagger. That for ages untold the ass has been 
thus under the ban is oddly shown in the tomb of Ti, in 
ancient Memphis. In one of the queer but curiously nat- 
ural processions of the servants of Ti, which are cut on 
the walls of the funeral chamber, is a man with uplifted 
stick driving a donkey. The hieroglyphs make him say, 
no doubt with the same protesting tone : " Men love those 
who go swiftly, but they beat the lazy ; if thou couldst 
but see thine own conduct 1" The tone of the modern 
Egyptian is, however, not so protesting as that of the 
Italian, though he has the same cry, " Aah !" to hurry on 
his beast. One now and then hears our cluck in lieu of 
the " A-ah 1" 

It is truly a marvel how this tiny creature can perform 
such labor. I have studied him carefully. It is well 
known that a man can outlast, outwork, and outcarry a 
horse. But the ass can do more than man, the most en- 
during of living creatures. He is able to carry his own 
weight and work all day. What man can stagger an 
hour under from one hundred and fifty to two hundred 
pounds ? 

They have some queer habits with the donkeys in Egypt. 




EGYPTIAN WOMAN S STYLE 



A QUEER RIDER 317 

One who trespasses on a neighbor's land — in innocent 
search of his natural food, poor fellow! — is dubbed a 
thief, and has a piece of his ear snipped off for each of- 
fence. Being hobbled when " at liberty " — by tying the 
fore-legs together — the donkey cannot go far, and luckily 
for him is not often proven guilty. The so-called thief 
would else soon have no ears to clip. To quote a pretty 
custom as a foil to this cruel one : the ass-colts have ribbons 
tied around their legs above the knees and hocks, and I 
have seen them with ears bored at the tips and tied to- 
gether — as if to cultivate a habit of carrying them erect. 
An ass-colt is one of the prettiest of creatures. 

Place aux dames ! While on the subject of the patient 
ass, we may glance at one of his constant patrons, per- 
haps the most peculiar rider that exists — the Arab woman. 
No such curious seat can be found elsewhere. The don- 
key-saddle of the East has no cantle whatsoever, but in 
Egypt a pommel — high, round, and full. The seat is so 
short that unless you use very long stirrups only a part 
of your riding surface rests on the saddle ; the balance 
hangs over the rear of the tree where the cantle should 
properly be. It is a most uncomfortable seat for a big 
man, who must overhang a good deal. For a small man 
it will do. The Egyptian female uses the man's rig and 
sits astraddle ; but she does not ricle with her legs hang- 
ing down ; this would not suit her ideas of propriety, 
though her Syrian cousin does not agree with her in 
this, but rides exactly like a man. Our Egyptian rider 
shortens her stirrups until the leathers are but a couple of 
inches long, mounts from a block, sits on the saddle as far 
forward as she can, throws her feet to the rear so that 
they are right under her thighs, and rides solely by bal- 
ance. Her knees are on either side of the padded pom- 
mel, and she might well get some kind of a hold on it ; but 



318 TRY HER STYLE! 

she attempts nothing but a balance seat, and her knees 
wobble in and out as she progresses along the street in 
charge of her black attendant. She is a sight to behold, 
and unquestionably the oddest Amazon there is. She can- 
not properly be said to have any seat at all ; but as the 
ass never shies or acts otherwise than as should a well- 
behaved little fellow to whose care is confided so precious 
a burden, and as his gait — a rack or amble — is ease itself, 
the lady's seat on her saddle is secure enough. Under the 
saddle is an indefinite array of blankets, which raise her 
far above his back. 

I desire to suggest to those of our lady friends who 
wish to startle the community, and to grasp such addi- 
tional public attention as their natural charms do not en- 
tice, that in lieu of riding a la militaire, they adopt the 
Egyptian lady's seat. That such a rider would be the 
cynosure of neighboring eyes cannot for a moment be 
doubted. But I should not like to insure her a long 
(promenade. 

Her Egyptian ladyship's little mount is often clipped in 
fancy patterns all over his body. Around the hind-legs, 
just above the hocks, are bands of zigzags alternating with 
straight lines ; on the buttocks are various neat devices 
produced by the scissors. Around the neck hang some 
chains of brass or gilt coins, or blue and yellow beads, 
and the bit has a row of jangling rings — all of which 
make merry music to the fair one's progress. This seems 
appropriate enough. But when you see a selfish Moslem 
comfortably bestriding his ass, while his pretty, young, 
only half -veiled wife trudges in the mud behind him, with 
much ado keeping up with the donkey's rapid gait, one 
wonders which is the brute of the twain who go in front. 
The four-footed one would never be so selfish. 






LIII 

The Arab donkey - boys are not often cruel to their lit- 
tle charges, or, at least, cruelty has been much checked. 
There has been a considerable change for the better in 
Egypt since the English have been in the land. The 
soldiers of the English garrisons have been forbidden to 
ride any donkey which shows signs of ill-treatment or 
saddle-galls, and the effect has been astonishing. Even the 
Arab can catch the true commercial idea up to a certain 
point. They are wonderful barterers, these Arabs, but 
they have not, as a rule, a very clear conception of what 
commerce means. So with all semi-civilized peoples. In 
Mexico, once, at Guadalajara, I think, where we could 
buy a dozen oranges for about five cents, the caterer of 
our dining-car was unable to buy two hundred dozen at 
any reduction whatever ; the people did not understand 
wholesale dealings, though oranges were rotting by the 
cart-load. Nor would they sell him more than a certain 
amount of mutton at a time, though they had flocks in 
abundance, nor at any discount from the price demanded 
by the pound. They failed to see the difference between 
wholesale and retail. The Arab 4s much like this. He 
will haggle over the price of a carpet for days, and beat 
you out and out ; but he is a poor business-man, after all. 
Still, he soon saw his profit in treating his donkey well, 
when he could not let him if he looked neglected. The 
city asses are in good condition (in Cairo there are many 
fine ones), and it seems to me that the instinct of cruelty 



320 ILL-USING DONKEYS 

is less marked in Africa than in Southern Europe. The 
Oriental is indolent even in his neglect or abuse, and he is 
better-natured. On the Bulak bridge, one day, I saw an 
Arab brushed off his donkey by the load of a passing 
camel. He fell into deep mud, and with an aggravating 
thump. An Italian or a Spaniard would have got up and 
instantly taken to beating the donkey, though it was in 
nowise the little fellow's fault. But the Arab merely 
pulled himself together, expended a voluble Arabic ob- 
jurgation on the owner of the camel, mounted his ass, and 
went on Avith a laugh. I longed for a phonograph ; the 
rattle of the words was so catching. 

The donkey -boys have one habit, however, which is 
thoroughly bad. Whenever the donkey is not at work his 
head is tied back to the saddle, and is kept there hours at a 
time. The result is that the poor little fellow bores upon 
the tight rein, and suffers acutely from the unchanging 
pressure on the mouth. If he can get near a wall or a 
tree, he will lean his poor nose hard against it as a relief 
to the cruel pain. It is said that the practice is necessary 
to keep him and the others about him from going on a 
stampede, especially near water ; but the thing is over- 
done. Hobbling would be equally easy and more effect- 
ive. All donkeys have hard mouths as a consequence of 
this habit. You can ride them on a loose rein, but if he 
were determined to go you could not pull one up with a 
windlass. 

I once had a really narrow escape with a hard-mouthed 
ass. I was riding on the side of the hill which, opposite 
Jerusalem, makes one slope of the valley of Kedron, near 
the village of Siloah. The hill is as steep as the roof of 
a house, and is formed of huge masses of protruding 
rock and gigantic bowlders, on and against which the vil- 
lage is built. So marked is the rocky nature of the hill- 




TIRED DONKEY-BOY 



A ROUGH RIDE 323 

side that from the other side of the valley, half a mile 
away, you can scarcely see that there is a village nestling 
in the rocks. Well, my son on foot, and I on an ass, 
followed by the usual ass -driver, were winding our way 
among and around the rocks and bowlders, along tortuous 
foot-paths so narrow that my knees were being constantly 
excoriated though the ass kept the middle of the path, 
when, to my disgust, Mr. Jack lifted his nose and his 
voice in a " he-haw " of delight, and began to gambol for- 
ward ; and, to my horror, I perceived ahead of us, on a 
lower path, to which a sane goat would hardly have vent- 
ured to seek its way, so rugged was the ground, the 
Jenny who had moved my mount to such unusual excite- 
ment. Before I could gather the reins — for I had been 
letting the imperturbable and surefooted little Jack take 
his own course — the villain was on a gallop towards his 
Delilah. I tried to pull him up ; I sawed his mouth, I 
jerked, I strove ; as well pull on a hitching-post. I re- 
alized my situation at once. There was no danger of 
Jack's going down — an ass will clamber up or jump down 
unheard-of obstacles — but the question was whether I 
should not get brushed off, or the ill-girthed saddle turn in 
this novel race. On we went, and on started Jenny, as if 
it were royal sport. My stupid ass-driver, with a pious 
but unhelpful "Allah !" sat him down to watch the event. 
His only stake was a little backsheesh which he would 
forfeit if I was shot down the precipice to the Kedron, 
three hundred feet below. My son unluckily was behind, 
and could not get past us on the narrow pathway so as to 
seize Jack by the head. With a clear road he could safely 
have outstripped the ass, for the pace was not fast ; but I 
never rode so determined a creature. I have repeatedly 
been run away with by horses, but I never felt such an 
absolutely cast-iron mouth. Finally, Jack reached Jenny, 



324 "BACKSHEESH!" 

and I flattered myself that I could pull him up. Not so ; 
on went Jenny, on followed Jack, " he-hawing " with hor- 
rible persistence. Up went Jenny's heels, smartly cuffing 
Jack's nose and chest ; but this was mere play. Jack 
kept biting at her rump, and she let fly her heels at every 
alternate stride. All my efforts were now pointed at 
avoiding these kicks, which several times struck my stir- 
rup and my stirrup-leather, luckily a broad one, and Jenny 
was unshod. I have since childhood felt an ambition to 
visit the brook Kedron ; but it now looked as if my am- 
bition were to be all too summarily gratified. My son 
was posting on behind ; he could at any time have seized 
Jack by the tail, but his tail was presumably almost as 
tough as his mouth. Finally, the ass -drivers appeal to 
Allah prevailed. By a bold scramble up a rock and a 
ten- foot jump on the other side, my son headed off Master 
Jack, whom Miss Jenny's dalliance had for an instant 
delayed, and, by a smart blow across his face and a grab 
at the reins, helped me stop the brute and drive off his 
temptress. Why Jack's jaw did not break with my jerks 
or the severe curb he had I cannot explain , all I know 
is that I was powerless. Give me a frightened horse 
every time rather than an amorous Jack. On a broad 
highway it would have been fun ; but any one who has 
ever clambered up to Siloah will understand the uncer- 
tainties of the case during this far from interesting race. 
Finally, as a wind-up, the ass-driver reached us and — amaz- 
ing to relate, but comprehensible to all who have seen 
him in his native haunts — actually extended his hand for 
backsheesh ; no doubt fervently believing that his cry 
to Allah had saved me rather than my son's breakneck 
jump. 

The loads the little ass bears are often as peculiar as 
they are heavy. I have seen him carrying a bulky load 



A QUEER ANIMAL 325 

of cane which trailed along the ground on either side and 
behind him. The butts protruded beyond his head, so 
that only from the front could you perceive the motive 
power of the curious mass. From the side naught was to 
be seen but an occasional ear thrust out from the 
moving bulk ; the rest of the donkey was lost. About 
dark, one clay near the Damascus gate at Jerusalem, I saw 
a still more curious one. While musing on the mutability 
of human, the degradation of Semitic affairs, and seek- 
ing to decide the pros and cons of Gordon's New Calvary, 
a donkey suddenly appeared to me, coming from the 
slaughtering ground opposite the Mount of Olives, laden 
with fresh sheep-hides, wool side out. The little beast had 
but his head protruding from the quivering, bloody mass ; 
you could just catch sight of his pattering feet. In the 
gloaming he was actually a startling creature, and all but 
gave me a tumble from the wall on Avhich I sat. Even 
Cuvier, father of naturalists, could scarce have classified 
and might properly have fled from him as a truly supernat- 
ural entity — though, indeed, Cuvier is credited with once 
readily classifying the devil. It was thus : His pupils, in- 
credulous as to their master's alleged contempt of his 
Satanic Majesty, had dressed up one of their number as 
like him as they could, had phosphorus-streaked and armed 
him with the proper sheol pitchfork and other properties, 
and had sent him into the philosopher's garden one night to 
scare him. " Who are you ?'' quoth Cuvier, as the appari- 
tion leaped out from behind a bush. " I'm the devil and 
I've come to eat you !" howled the fiend, with a dreadful 
stage-caper. Startled for an instant, Cuvier quickly re- 
covered himself, and contemptuously looking the soi disant 
devil over from head to foot : " Horns, tail, hoofs — grami- 
nivorous ; you can't do it !" said he, and turned upon his 
heel. Unlike Cuvier, with me it became a perceptible case 



326 AN ARAB PROVERB 

of demoralization before I classified my strange intruder. 
My musing had prevented my noticing the unmistakable 
sound of his gait. 

Why the above should suggest it, I wot not ; but here 
is a terse and characteristic Arab proverb, which I pray 
you to read, learn, mark, and inwardly digest. 

" Mankind is of four classes : 

"He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, 
is a fool. Shun him. 

" He who knows not, and knows that he knows not, is 
simple. Teach him. 

"He who know T s,and knows not that he knows, is asleep. 
Wake him. 

" He who knows, and knows that he knows, is wise. 
Folio w him." 



LIV 



" Speak, ye that ride on white asses, ye that sit in judg- 
ment and walk by the way," sang Deborah of old; and 
to-day the white ass bred by the sheiks of the desert is a 
noble animal and highly prized. Such a one is shown in 
the illustration. The rider of such an animal might well 
sit in judgment, though to walk by the way is not often 
the habit of the dignified Arab of our times. He will let 
his wife walk, he himself prefers the comfort of a horse 
or ass; and the latter is not infrequently chosen as the 
better mount. The white ass of high quality commands, 
as asses go, a long price ; and for comfort on a journey 
is almost unequalled — for speed unexcelled. On rough 
ground he is more surefooted than any horse, and a very 
goat for climbing. The specimen illustrated shows signs 
of knees roughened by kneeling down in stony places, 
and the marks of hobbling on his fore fetlocks. Many 
are better cared for and have no such blemishes. But, as 
a rule, all asses show scored knees, not from falling, but 
from lying down where the ground is rough. There are 
asses w T hich are not surefooted — generally from age or 
overwork — but the ass is wont to be so. 

Perhaps as wonderful as the donkey, almost, is the 
donkey-boy. He always accompanies his fare — you have 
to give him unusual backsheesh to induce him to remain 
behind ; and however fast the donkey goes, the boy is al- 
ways up. In fact, he tries to hurry the donkey all he can, 
the sooner to finger his backsheesh. He trots along, carries 



328 ARAB RUNNERS 

a bundle of clover for the donkey, the bundles of his rider, 
and sundry other things, and seems to care naught for dis- 
tance or speed. He has no particular style of going, but 
he gets there. He often breathes hard, but seems to mind 
it not a whit. The farthest on a stretch I ever rode a 
donkey at a sharp gait was to the Pyramids from Cairo, 
eight good miles. This distance in an hour and a quarter 
was child's play to the lad, who had wind enough to keep 
after his donkey in both senses ; and on the way home 
was yet more lively. I have often wondered whether 
they live long or not ; you see them unnumbered years 
old ; but were these old men ever real donkey-boys f It is 
no sin to prevaricate to a dog of a Christian ; so that the 
old man's assurance that he has worked at the trade for 
anywhere from fifty to eighty years goes for nothing. 

Another great footman is the sais, or outrunner. This 
man is often the finest type of a running animal. He is 
clad in purple and fine linen. His nether garments are of 
light thin white goods, loose and gathered at the knee, 
and so made as not to hamper his movements. He wears 
a shirt often trimmed with the finest laces ; a sleeveless 
zouave jacket of velvet, fairly glistening with gold em- 
broidery, covers his body, and a gorgeous sash binds his 
waist. He wears a snug fancy fez-like embroidered cap, 
or sometimes a light turban. In this gay and costly dress 
he precedes his master's carriage, ostensibly to make room 
through the crowd, really for show ; and on the road will 
run at a seven or eight mile an hour gait as long as the 
horses. Two sais running together is the proper thing 
for a swell ; but the carriage to our eye is not always as 
neatly turned as the sais. 

The Arabs are a light, lithe, strong, and nimble race, as 
well as handsome beyond cavil. They have many fine 
physical qualities. The Arab's feet are wont to be large, 



1 



MM 




SLIGHT BUT ACTIVE 331 

but that is because he walks barefoot ; his hands are often 
made coarse by labor and neglect ; but his joints are neatly 
turned, and his bone is small and dense ; his muscular struct- 
ure, while lacking the fulness of fatter nations, gives him 
considerable strength , and he has rather exceptional en- 
durance. The same climate which produced the Arabian 
horse has produced the Arabian runner. He lives under 
skies where simple food and little of it will keep the hu- 
man animal in good health and strong. He has to eat 
purely for alimentation ; he does not raise enough to en- 
able him to overeat ; his stomach remains in better con- 
dition, and if reduced to slender rations he does not so 
soon become a starveling. 



1 



IV 



The saddles in Egypt have no special type, though all 
partake of the general Oriental features. You see every- 
thing from a donkey's to an English saddle on the horses. 
One common type has the sitting-place round like the out- 
side of a huge water-pipe. From the front projects an up- 
right two-inch square perpendicular piece to serve as pom- 
mel; the high and slanting cantle is scooped out much 
after the fashion of a giant oyster-shell. The flaps are 
long and square, and the stirrups hang inside them. In 
the country well up the Nile the saddle-tree is simple, 
the bearings made much like those of the old-type Ind 
ian, but with a pommel and cantle less prominent than 
even a McClellan. The two bearing-pieces are whittled out 
crudely, and shrunk in place by covering the whole with 
rawhide, leaving the saddle open down the back, like a 
very illy-made, unfinished Whitman tree. Under it goes 
a folded blanket ; over it no end of rugs, all in pictu- 
resque-disarray. The stirrup-leathers are hung well for- 
ward, and the girth is kept so loose that it is often 
fastened only by a packthread. I have not seen a single 
well-girthed horse in Egypt ridden by a native. To us, 
who believe in keeping a saddle in place and then sticking 
to it, this seems odd ; but the natives do not appear to 
heed the matter, and their saddles do not slip, even in 
violent turns and twists. The bit is, of course, a gag, 
and the trappings are as gaudy as they are apt to be 
dirty and rotten. 



BALANCE IN RIDING 333 

I have often wondered at this insecure girthing, but the 
secret seems to lie in the man's holding on bodily with his 
heels just below the semicircle of the horse's barrel. As 
you could not pull off from a cylinder a steel rod bent 
around it, and open less than a semicircle, so, if his mus- 
cles are rigid enough to keep his heels well pinned into 
the steed's flanks, will the Arab remain firmly fixed in 
place, girths or no girths. He does no more than half of 
the rest of us, who often wear dulled spurs so as more 
conveniently to hold on, or who else bring our horse in 
with bloody flanks when we have not consciously used 
our persuaders at all. 

There is a good deal in the nice balance of horseman- 
ship, and a strong grip will often hold the saddle in place. 
One cla} r , many years ago, I was being shown the paces of 
a famous stallion at Mount Sterling, Kentucky. Just as 
the rider started out his one girth broke ; but far from 
stopping, he only bent dowm, seized the dangling girth, 
threw it across the horse's withers and went on quite un- 
concernedly, showing the fine gait of his mount to per- 
fect advantage, and keeping his saddle in place merely 
by grip and balance. 

The lack of the graceful burnoose makes the Egyptian 
Arab a less attractive horseman than his kin of Algeria 
and Tunis. But I have seen some very neat-turned horses 
in Upper Egypt. I remember in particular a fine four- 
year-old I saw ridden by an Arab at Belianeh. I was 
prosaically plodding along on my donkey towards the 
temple, at Abydos, of old Seti of blessed artistic memory, 
when I ran across this man. A friendly nod, an approv- 
ing glance at his handsome iron -gray, and a couple of 
cigarettes, quickly induced him to exhibit his horse at 
his best. He was almost the only Arabian I have seen 
whose head was properly in hand, who was well-gathered, 



334 A FINE COLT 

and who did not constantly throw up his nose. The colt 
could piaffer, gallop in place, traverse and pirouette very 
handily, and possessed the highest grace. His owner had 
a light hand and a fine seat, and seemed very fond and 
proud of his mount. I talked with him in signs suf- 
ficiently for him to see that I understood what he was 
doing, and he seemed equally surprised and glad to find a 
Frank who did so. After a few moments I managed to 
make him understand by signs what I wanted him to 
have his horse do ; and for a mile or two my companions 
and I enjoyed a real treat. I think, however, that I had 
the best of it, as they were admiring the rhythmic move- 
ments of the steed, and I was appreciative of both these 
and his own and his master's intelligence. But the per- 
formance was only individual cleverness ; there was ap- 
parently no teachable method in it. Some things were 
manifestly done the wrong way, and at times it was the 
good spirits and light feet of his Arabian which were in- 
ducing the performance rather than the indication given 
by the rider. 

We must not leave Egypt without a glance at one of 
the camel-riders. The stories about the performances of 
camels are conflicting. I can vouch for some of the crack 
performances of horses ; I can only quote what I hear 
about camels. There is, both in looks and action, as much 
difference between a running and a porter camel as be- 
tween a cart-horse and a thorough -bred. The porter- 
camel is a thorough lourdeau. His body is a misshapen, 
bulky mass ; his hair is coarse ; his limbs are big-boned 
and awkwardly turned ; his neck is more ungainly than 
need be ; his head unintelligent or vicious, though often 
patient or pathetic. If aged, his under -lip hangs down 
and flops in a most distressing manner. He is strong and 
able, and it is from this that proceeds his endurance, for 




I 




he lacks grit, and if overloaded will sullenly refu- 

running-camel, on the other hand, shows blood in 
every point. Though the outlines of the camel cannot 
be said to be attractive, this creature, if you examine him, 
has precisely the same points as a greyhound or a r 
A fii riead, full nostril and throttle, no extra meat, 

enormous thorax, which girths even bigger than the por- 
nder abdomen, almost suggesting a lack of mus- 
cle in the fine shapely limbs, with shin-bones and 
3 as clean cut as a two-year-old in training: higher- 
standing feet, but with greater g o spread, so as to 
proper I _ on the sand : and, above all, a look of 
gentleness and yet courage, which is unmistakable in all 
high-bred mammals. His saddle qualities correspond to 
bis physical To ride a porter-camel is a task requiring 
as much stomach as to fish for cod in a ground- swelL 
To ride a runner is, when you learn the trick, not dis- 
able, but, like riding a horse, the trick must be learn- 
ed. The camel-riders have a way of putting on a sort of 
overhead check, and attaching it to the runner s nose-ring, 
which shortens his gait down into a comparatively easy 
amb to speed and endurance I can testify solely 
from hearsay. The specimens illustrated are from Upper 
:. You can plainly see the running animaL 
I have sought no special opportunities of testing camels 
on long journeys. My taste does not lie that way. My 
riding of camels has been Philistinic, not professional 
But in lands where all your food comes in to market 
a-camel-back ; where, whenever you go out riding or driv- 
ing, you must make way for, or at least give half the road 
string of a dozen or twenty camels every half mile : 
where these beasts are the railroad, the steamboat, and 
almost the electric cars — hold, it is our little friend, the 
ass, who is this, and better than the electric car he is: 
_- 



338 ENDURANCE OF CAMELS 

where the camel is all things to all men, except only as an 
article of food, one has to take a species of interest in even 
him. I have been able, I think, to gauge the horse fairly 
well; I cannot say that I know more about camels than 
the superficial and apt-to-be unreliable hearsay of his fel- 
low-man, so to speak, has given me. But I have been 
told by English army officers in Egypt, who have become 
familiar with what camels can do, that the performance 
heretofore quoted, of over one hundred miles a day, kept 
up for a long period, is not beyond belief. 



LYI 

Though in my journeys through the Orient I have 
had the good-fortune to see somewhat of fancy stock, I 
have not purposed to pay much heed to the studs of the 
great princes ; the horse of the people interests me more. 
One could scarcely expect a man to gain much of a knowl- 
edge of the horse of North America by taking him 
through the stables of Leland Stanford or over the Alex- 
ander farm ; by driving him out to Milton to see " Arion " 
and " Nancy Hanks ;" or by personally conducting him 
through the great training stables of the men who carry 
off the big racing events of the year. Nor does a man 
who describes the choicest specimens of the Arabian 
world convey to you any idea of the Arabian as most of 
us would see him. To pass in review the inmates of the 
imperial stables, or the stud of the Khedive, or even to 
tell about an exceptional specimen found in the tents of a 
Bedouin sheik out in the Arabian desert, is to portray a 
faultless creature — a sort of equine Thaddeus of Warsaw. 
A man may fall down and worship some of the beautiful 
Arabians, like the one in the illustration, for instance, who 
belongs to the Sultan, and whose lines, standing, are as 
perfect as his grace in motion. He is fleet and able ; he 
is gentle and intelligent, and he possesses the rare artistic 
beauty all must delight in except those who reduce the 
horse down to the level of a sumpter-animal or a gambling- 
tool. He is deservedly an object of our admiration. But 
so we may go into ecstasies over many of our own noble 
sires or great prize-winners. 



340 THE BEST ARABIAN 

This exceptional creature is not, however, the horse we 
want to know ; it is the average horse and rider all over 
the world which most appeals to us — the horse we our- 
selves might own. At all events, the latter is the horse 
I have proposed to chat with you about. You can find 
out the merits of the famous Arabians from other writers, 
for there are many such. 

It has been habitual to give us accounts of only the 
splendid horse of the sheiks and emirs ; and many, in- 
deed, of those who have painted them have not been stu- 
dents of the race. While there is a color of truth in all 
that we have heard about the Arabian, while the excep- 
tion is as marvellous in his way as a " Flora Temple " or 
a "Black Maria/' the average Arabian is by no means supe- 
rior to our own average horse — scarcely his equal. He is, 
moreover, so small as to be useless for any but light per- 
formance — an ordinary carriage to go a distance must 
have three or even four horses ; he would not do our work 
at all. 

The exceptional Arabian is unquestionably a fine fel- 
low ; but — and I think I may claim some experience, as 
I have seen and used horses in a great many parts of the 
world — apart from a certain attractiveness we readily 
grant him, I do not think that the best Arabian is nearly 
as good as the best hunter, the best trotter, the best racer, 
or the best saddle-horse of England or America ; and I am 
quite sure that I would stake my money on a hundred 
broncos of the Western plains, ridden in their own Avay by 
cowboys, against a hundred Arabians of the Syrian desert, 
ridden by Bedouins — for a pull of one to five hundred 
miles under conditions fair to each. This may be a strong- 
statement, but I believe it to be a just one. 

I by no means underrate the Arabian. In addition to 
his beauty he possesses many sterling qualities, and has 



COMPARATIVE VALUE 343 

retained in full measure that wonderful power of trans- 
mitting his virtues which has made his impress so strong 
on all the stock we most prize at home. But he has never 
been intelligently bred by the Arab world at large. We 
may not, perhaps, deny that a few of the Arabs of the 
Syrian desert have kept his qualities unsoiled ; but there 
is no proof that he is any better to-day than he ever was. 
We know that our thorough-bred stock is better than it 
used to be, better than its desert ancestry. We know that 
whenever our second-raters have met the best Arabians 
they have conquered them even on their own soil, in their 
own climate, and at their own distances. So far as such 
things can be measured, we know that our performances 
in England and America are quite unequalled by the Ara- 
bian; and we have good cause to believe that, for our 
purposes, our common run of horses as much excel in 
usefulness the common run of Arabians as they do in 
size. Moreover, I do not believe that there was ever an 
Arabian foaled which could perform the feat of the little 
El Paso-Chihnahua express pony. I am quite ready to 
be corrected — by a proper record. 

Right here let me disclaim any value which may be 
placed on the recent so-called Cowboy Race from Ne- 
braska to Chicago. It was not a cowboy race, but a S. P. 
C. A. race. Fancy sixty miles a day being the winning 
gait ! Why, a decent cavalry brigade can march sixty 
miles a day for a month. I speak on behalf of those men 
who know the real value of broncos and plains horses, and 
the real capacity of the cowboy to ride. For a man to 
ride a distance race with an agent of the S. P. C. A. at 
his elbow to keep him from committing Berghlary savors 
keenly of the ridiculous. 



LVII 

When we reach Syria we approach as near the home 
of the best type of the Arabian horse as the traveller is 
apt to get. The nomad Bedouins or Kabyle tribes beyond 
the Jordan, who winter in the Arabian desert and wander 
northward to escape its summer heat and droughts, prob- 
ably own the best blood that exists. It is here that the 
French have found the fine stallions they are using to re- 
trieve the failing stock of Algeria. These Bedouins are 
not numerous ; twenty -five thousand souls will cover all 
the tribes. 

I believe that these Bedouins have kept nearer than 
any other people to the purest strain of Arabian blood. 
You must ride for many days, and put up with a good 
deal of privation, heat, and dirt to reach the habitat of 
this truly noble beast, but it is worth your while. The 
Arabs beyond the Jordan are practically not subject to 
the Turkish rule. They are strictly nomads, and for sub- 
sistence raise camels, asses, and horses, beeves, sheep, and 
goats. They come and go at will; they bulldoze the 
agricultural peasantry into giving them a large modicum 
of their crops as tribute, and the poor soil-tillers find it a 
far safer means of securing quiet than to rely on the Sul- 
tan's shallow pretence of protection ; they demand back- 
sheesh even from those who only go down from Jerusa- 
lem to Jericho, lest they, too, should fall among thieves ; 
they make war on each other at will ; they are as free as 
the Sioux of 1840. The simple trip to the Dead Sea has 



SYRIAN BEDOUINS 345 

to be made under escort of a Bedouin, as a species of 
backsheesh to these wild tribes, while to go beyond the 
Jordan necessitates as complicated a previous diplomatic 
negotiation with the sheiks through whose territory you 
desire to pass as the transfer of a European province. 
You cannot deal with one ; all the tribes are at war, or, 
at least, in a state of armed neutrality ; but you may deal 
through one with the rest. After you get into their 
midst you are handed from one tribal limit to another 
with as much ceremony as if you were a distinguished 
State prisoner — which, indeed, you are. There is no risk 
to your life, unless you should fall in with warring tribes, 
and then little; but you do well to carry no valuables. 
Having made your trade and agreed as to backsheesh, 
the payment of the half of which you are generally ad- 
vised to reserve to the end, you may commit yourself con- 
fidently to your swarthy-skinned guides. Particularly if 
you are fond of horses will you excite their sympathy. 
Many is the suspicious-looking Arab who has hailed me 
as a brother, because out of two horses I instinctively 
picked one with the better points. Many is the fraternal 
embrace I have been fain to submit to. But all this apart. 
I am not writing a book of travels. 

The Syrian Bedouin is in some respects a better type 
of man than the Arab of Africa. To begin with, he has 
more respect for his women. No traveller sees anything 
of an Arab's household ; it is discourteous, and not always 
safe to refer to his wives. When I was visiting my friend 
the caliph — not of Bagdad, but of M'Kalta — I was much 
tempted to ask some questions as to his family. The Ko- 
ran allows him four wives — how many he has I know not. 
His two sons, one fourteen and one eight years old, I 
saw a number of times ; he was proud to introduce them 
to me. On several occasions a couple of little girls, who 



346 THE BEDOUIN'S FAMILY 

had escaped from the women's end of the khan, came run- 
ning out into the enclosure. I beckoned to them, and they 
came to me ; but my conversation with them was as lim- 
ited as it would have been with a French dog or cat. 
By-the-way, do you know the French, or German, or Ital- 
ian, or Spanish equivalent of " Pussy, pussy, pussy ?" I 
have frequently been stumped in my attempted conversa- 
tions with foreign animals by lack of knowledge of their 
patois. And they resent the foreign tone or words more 
than children. Well, as I said, the little girls came to me 
and were soon reconciled by a bit of chocolate. I always 
carry chocolate in my pocket on a tramp. Half a cubic 
inch of good chocolate — I like Menier the best, though 
this is not a paid advertisement — will stay the stomach 
better than anything I know, The little girls, despite 
their odd garments, were just like children anywhere ; but 
soon a serving-man came and lugged them away. There 
were, I have no doubt, a number of women in the khan, 
but while I was there not a sight of them could I get. 
All the service was by men. I dare say I was wise not 
to make inquiries. I might have offended the sense of 
propriety of my delightful host. 

To return to the Bedouin, I am told that he pays con- 
siderable heed to his wives and daughters ; his first wife 
is held in special honor, and really rules his house — or, as 
he lives in tents, one might say, his outfit. With the Syri- 
an Bedouin the woman has the same soul that Allah gave 
the man. She works, but is not degraded to a state of 
slavery. Her toil is mostly within the tent, but it may be 
with the herds. In any event, the man does the heavy 
work, the woman merely helps. 



LVIII 

There is, as I have been told and have already stated, 
a curious equine distinction between the African and 
Asiatic Arabs, in that the latter ride mares, while the for- 
mer use stallions for saddle-work. I have reason to be- 
lieve that far out on the Libyan Desert proper the same 
rule as to the preference for mares prevails; but on the 
edge of the desert the stallion is apparently the most 
used. Among the Syrian Bedouins the stallion is an alto- 
gether secondary animal. The mare is the darling of the 
sheik, the pet of the family. She is treated as a child, far 
better really than the children. One or two of the most 
promising of the stallions are kept, the rest are sent into 
the cities for sale. A mare is never sold. This accounts 
for the fact that the tourist, who never gets far beyond 
the cities, sees only stallions. The price paid for a good 
average four-year-old horse delivered in Damascus or Jeru- 
salem runs from thirty to fifty dollars ; a fine horse costs 
seventy to one hundred dollars ; there is no price put on a 
"stunner;" you must negotiate for him as for a homestead 
— perhaps as you would for a wife. 

The high-bred Arabian Desert mares seem always to 
be kept in condition. They are spare, and their naturally 
small frame makes them appear more so. " You raise 
buffaloes, not horses !" an Arab of the desert will sneer- 
ingly say to the owner of a fine, well-rounded, picture-book 
stallion. The splendid beauty of the Arabian, as we un- 
derstand it, is to him an utter delusion. He has but one 



348 MARES NEVER SOLD 

test — race, and the speed, gentleness, and courage which 
ought to come of race. The Arabians which the ordinary 
traveller picks out as the finest are those which fill the 
eye ; the best mare in the desert may be far from a beau- 
ty ; she is " a rum 'un to look at, but a devil to go." 

The Bedouin cannot be induced to sell a mare. It is in 
her that he takes chief pride ; through her he keeps the 
pedigree. If forced by debt or distress to part with her, 
he has the right to stipulate that she shall be bred to such 
and such a horse, and that he shall have the first mare- 
foal. He will never ride a horse when be can ride a mare. 
Most of the Bedouins who are put on escort duty ride 
horses, but this is because all the travellers do the same, 
and it is not convenient to mix the sexes ; but let him get 
beyond the reach of the current of tourists and it is his 
mare he bestrides ; it is to her that he trusts his life. 
Geldings exist, but they are rare. I remember to have 
seen but two or three in Syria. 

It will, I fear, be a disappointment to the reader for me 
to say that the common Arabian of Syria is so nearly like 
the bronco that the Bedouin might be set down as a cow- 
boy—bar clothes and seat and intelligence. So far as the 
horse goes you might mix a hundred of each in a big cor- 
ral, leave them alone a month, and it would be hard for 
any but an expert to pick out either kind. By common 
Arabian I mean the saddle-horse that is used in every-day 
life, the equine vin du pays. Take a hundred of the av- 
erage of these horses, and seventy of them will be bron- 
cos ; the rest will show some marks of what we Occident- 
als call better blood. There are two or three points of 
difference : the Arabian croup is higher, the barrel back 
of the girths less swollen, the withers less prominent, the 
ewe neck by a shade less pronounced. But the work-a- 
day Arabian of Syria plainly shows his cousinship with 



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KIND TREATMENT 351 

the cow-pony of our plains. He shows, too, the old steppes 
type to which all horses tend to revert, as the dog does to 
the jackal type, unless bred by man. The fact is by no 
means so prominent in Africa. There you are less wont 
to travel on horseback ; in Syria you must do it, and the 
country is so full of saddle - beasts — among them mul- 
titudes of poor ones — that you cannot fail to observe the 
fact. 

For the common Syrian hack it must, however, be said 
that he is tractable. His long acquaintance with an easy- 
going and kindly race of men has vastly improved him. 
His manners are just what the bronco's are not. He will 
not buck, or bite, or strike, or " fool." In all this he is 
vastly the superior of the wild horse, whose natural want 
of manners has been increased manifold by the naturally 
cruel Indian and by the cowboy, who is too busy to devote 
time to gentling him. Like Artemus Ward with the tiger, 
he is apt to fondle him with a 'club. To the Arab, how- 
ever, time is nothing ; his climatic indolence leads to in- 
nate kindness. So far as capacity to go is concerned, I have 
already pronounced in favor of the bronco. But for a 
pleasant mount commend me to the placid -eyed, sweet- 
willed Arabian, whose ample courage is tempered with 
moderation, and whose desire to do your will is shown in 
his every act. If there is anything which I as heartily de- 
spise as I honestly admire, it is a bronco. 

And I find that I am not alone in this. Out on the 
ranches, old settlers "hate a bronk," and you cannot hire 
one to ride an "outlaw," as they call a bronco who is so 
tricky as to be really dangerous. On the old-fashioned 
ranges a cowboy is expected to take one or two question- 
able ponies among the six or eight he rides ; but he won't 
take any more than his quota. A man who doesn't ob- 
ject to an over-allowance of "bronk" can get a job any day 



352 THE ARABIANS GAITS 

anywhere. But there are few of them, except on the 
newer ranges. 

Unless for the saddle, the Arabian is not worth his salt. 
He is too light for draught. For the saddle, the Ken- 
tucky type is better ; as to gaits, infinitely to be preferred. 
When I say Kentucky, I mean the best class of Southern- 
bred saddle-horses everywhere. I am naturally led to 
speak of Kentucky as I am more familiar with that State 
than the others. The gaits of the Arabian horse are not 
as pure as those of the Southern. He has but two which 
may be called perfect — the walk and gallop. His flat- 
footed walk is undeniably good ; on the whole, better than 
the average in the South, and that is saying a great deal. 
His amble or rack is good, but neither rapid nor even 
and reliable in individuals. He has rarely a canter proper ; 
he always gallops. To " canter all day in the shade of an 
apple-tree " is an unknown art to him ; he must go a given 
speed. I have not seen a single slow, easy, rhythmical 
canter in Asia or Africa, though I have seen a Bedouin at 
Sbfantaslya plant his spear, and canter around it without 
quitting his hold. This was, however, at great exertion to 
man and beast, not performed as my " Patroclus " used to 
do it — quietly, well-collected, and without strain. The Ara- 
bian's gallop is rapid and neatly poised ; he gathers hand- 
ily and quickly ; but he has not the true racing stride. 
Still, for saddle - work, his gallop is good. Except these 
two, the Arabian has no gait worth mention. His amble 
or rack is slow ; he cannot start out into a sharp, fast, 
twelve-mile rack. The running- walk as a steady, trained, 
uniform gait, is unknown, though some individual horses 
happen to blunder into it. Nor has the Arabian saddle- 
beast a trot, unless trained for a Frank. 

Saddle-gaits are a matter of intelligent education. Un- 
questionably, in his sharp and sudden manoeuvres in the 



SYRIAN SADDLES 353 

fantasiya, the Arabian is an expert. But a good polo-rider 
will beat him even at this game, and in any event it is not 
pure saddle- work. It is like any other specialty, as hunting 
or racing. For unadulterated saddle-work I have owned 
Kentucky horses far and away ahead of anything I have 
seen among Arabs, and I do not claim to have had prince- 
ly horses, but only the best of the average run, well- 
trained. 

There is one exception to the rule I have given. The 
Cretan horse often has a fast rack. He goes the gait in 
perfect purity, and is said to be able to carry a man twelve 
miles and over within the hour. When the ordinary good 
horse. brings ten or twelve pounds sterling, this little fel- 
low, who differs only in ability to go from his cousins, and 
is otherwise a mean-looking, low-headed runt, will always 
find a purchaser at forty pounds and upwards. I could 
learn nothing of his ancestry. * 

The Syrian saddle has many varieties, none very marked. 
From what resembles a high-cantled, leather-covered Eng- 
lish saddle to one of modified Oriental type, you find all 
kinds and sizes. The saddle is rather apt to be covered 
with a sheepskin, so as to conceal its peculiarities. The 
man's seat is the same as in Africa, with very short stir- 
rups, knees thrust way forward, and heels dug into the 
horse's flanks. There is no pretence to hold on by the 
knees ; the grip is solely with calf and heel. Most sad- 
dles, if you will use long stirrups, can be made fairly com- 
fortable to a small man ; but no one, not used to it, can 
ride d VArabe. There is no chance to move in an Arab's 
saddle, and a sudden jerk, if it unseats you, does so effect- 
ually ; in an English saddle there is much room for read- 
justing your seat after a sudden jerk. In the one you are 
fairly kicked out of the saddle ; in the other }^ou may re- 
cover yourself. The saddle in Asia Minor has a leather- 

23 



354 SYRIAN BITS 

covered, half -military seat, semicircular on side-view, with 
a pommel very full and wide between the knees, and more 
uncomfortable, if possible, than the Syrian. 

The Syrian bit is the curious gag used in many places 
in the Orient. It has two branches; the curb -chain is a 
ring permanently jointed to the top of the tongue - arch. 
In putting the bit in the horse's mouth, you slip this ring 
over his chin. One size does for all horses ; but as the 
Arab is not a three-legged rider, leaving his reins loose at 
all times, the kind of bit is of not great importance; it 
will not gall. But it is a bit a heavy jerk of which may 
break the bone at the back of the horse's jaw. The bridle 
is always a fancy one, often trimmed with shell-work, and 
the breast -strap and saddle - trappings are wonderful in 
their tawdry picturesqueness. Many a Bedouin, however, 
even if he owns a noble mare, is too poor to boast a bridle. 
He rides with a rope-halter only. The intelligent creature 
does not even need that, the voice is enough. Colts are 
broken to saddle and taught their gaits with halter alone. 
If, as rarely happens, a colt is fractious, the rope is passed 
through his mouth. A Southerner, whose children ride 
the colts at pasture with a mere stick, understands this 
well. It is half docility, half daily familiarity of the horse 
with his master. This habit of docile breaking is thou- 
sands of years old in the Orient. Light native cavalry of 
all ancient countries used to ride without bridles, guiding 
solely by voice and legs. Such was Hannibal's famous 
Numidian horse, and we know how wonderfully they 
could gallop around the enemy. Their favorite tactics 
was to make a sudden attack, fly at the first bold resist- 
ance, and attack and fly again, until they had Avearied 
their opponents and laid them open to real assault. This 
argues immense tractability in their steppes ponies. It is 
a similar tactics to that in which the Cossack is an adept. 



TRIMMING TAILS 355 

The rich coloring of the Bedouin's clothes and trappings 
is a never-ending source of delight to the eye. Under our 
own less sunny skies the showy rags would wear upon the 
artistic fancy. Not so in the Orient ; and when a man is 
rich and well -mounted, and clothes himself and his horse 
with purple and fine linen, he is gude for sair e'en. One 
never tires of looking at him. 

We are apt to imagine that the Arab leaves his horse 
as Allah made him ; that he would scorn to cut his mane 
or tail. This is far from the truth. The Arab hogs his 
horse's mane quite often ; he bangs his tail ; he squares it 
short with a small switch hanging down from the centre 
— and a ridiculous looking tail it is, confined mostly to 
Jerusalem and vicinity ; and, worse than all, he sometimes 
trims the tail short like a foal's tail not yet grown, to give 
his horse a youthful appearance, and under the mistaken 
impression as well that the hair by this trimming will 
grow longer and fuller. Fashion is as marked a tyrant 
among the Bedouins as in Rotten Eow or in Central Park. 



LIX 



The Bedouin is full of horse superstitions. His horse- 
lore is much like that of our old-fashioned liveryman of a 
past generation. I don't refer to the intelligent Yankee 
breeder; I mean the humdrum, half-^, half -trader, who 
knew of but one cure for the staggers, and that was to sell 
the horse. The Bedouin, like this happily extinct horse- 
man, knows a horse's habits and diseases by observation 
solely ; he has no idea of anatomy. Every species of wind 
trouble to which the horse is subject he merely describes 
as " having something wrong inside him." He treats a 
horse on a system of old saws. For lameness he has but 
one remedy, the hot iron. His horse will work to twenty 
or even twenty -five years old, but he thinks that he 
"grows weaker" after twelve. In buying he looks more 
at marks than points. I have never yet seen an Arab 
critically examine a horse from head to heel as we do, 
each point in proper succession. Probably they satisfy 
themselves as to a horse's race and general soundness, and 
then only give heed to marks. But they talk marks more 
than points. Soundness is assumed, and as a rule exists in 
this exceptionally hardy race. 

One very intelligent Arab sheik with whom I sat down 
at the old, old Jordan ford east of Jericho, where all the 
pilgrims bathe, and with whom I conversed for hours 
during the mid -day heat, when I asked him what he 
looked for first in a horse he was going to buy, told me 
with the utmost gravity the " color of his feet." He 






ARAB SUPERSTITIONS 357 

probably meant providing the horse was otherwise all 
right, but I could not get him to say so. I stood beside 
his horse, and laid my hand on his several points one by 
one ; but the old man would not even nod an assent as if 
he understood me ; he kept to his text. " Four white 
feet," said he, " are good ; with a star, very good." What, 
thought I, becomes of our old proverb anent the crows? 
" If he has the two fore-feet and the near hind-foot white, 
it is good," he went on, rolling a fresh cigarette between 
every two sentences ; " but if it is the off hind-foot which 
is white, he is a bad horse — never buy him. He will cost 
you your life ; your enemy will overtake and slay you, your 
son will be an orphan." Here came in a pause awful in 
its length and intensity, as if I were to be myself visited 
by this dire calamity. " Two hind -feet white and a star 
are good; so is the near hind -foot white; but beware 
of the off hind-foot alone white !" Again an awful pause. 
"To have the two near feet white is excellent, because 
then you must mount and dismount 'over the white.' 
And a dark horse with dark legs is good." Not a word 
could I get out of this old sheik about points ; on marks 
he was strong. I was told that he was highly respected 
by the Arabs for his knowledge of horses. I could not see 
w 7 hy. No judge on the woolsack was ever more reverend 
or more positive ; but his dignity seemed to me to be in 
inverse ratio to his horse wisdom. 

It is, by-the-w^ay, curious that this white foot business 
was well known in England, and, to a certain extent, was 
an article of faith, some three hundred years ago. It most 
probably came over with the early Turkish importations 
— " Turkish " being a broad term, and covering a vast 
territory. 

I asked the old sheik what his horse weighed. "A 
horse w r eighs one hundred rot'l," said he, after a prolonged 

23* 



358 DELIBERATENESS 

pause ; not his horse particularly, but any horse, he meant. 
A rot'l is about five pounds. " But why ?" I asked. "Oh, 
because a horse weighs as much as two men," was his long 
cogitated reply. " But," I quickly objected, " this horse 
weighs as much as four or five or six men !" " Yes," he 
gravely agreed, after waiting an exceptional time to make 
up for my hasty interpellation, " but I mean a very big 
man." His ideas on all points relating to a horse were 
about as definite as this. In treating a horse for sickness, 
the Arabs are very children. But their horses, out of 
doors, and standing on the earth at all times, are as hardy 
as the bronco, and need scant medical treatment. 

The Arab keenly enjoys conversation, but it must be 
deliberate and long drawn out. Our Occidental haste, in 
talk and trade alike, they deem objectionable in a high 
degree — almost insulting. You may go into a carpet- 
store and haggle and haggle by the half -day, drink the 
coffee invariably offered you, and even if you do not buy, 
providing alwaj^s you are very slow and familiar and 
chatty, your visit will be deemed a courtesy, and all the 
trouble the store-keeper and his men have taken to spread 
out a hundred rugs for your inspection will be quite com- 
pensated for by your kind words and pleasant smiles. 
But if you just go in, look at a few, and hastily purchase, 
or bid on one or more, he deems you almost an intruder 
on his privacy. He wants the fun of haggling and talk- 
ing. The profit is a mere incident — though it be his 
daily bread. In those bazaars which are kept by Greeks 
or by other non- Orientals, this rule does not apply; but 
it does with all self-respecting Eastern merchants. This 
is of a part with their extreme slowness in coming to a 
point in conversation. 

Color, in the Bedouin's estimation, ranks : bay, chestnut 
or sorrel, blue (comprising iron-gray, blue-roan, gray, and 



AN ARAB SAW 359 

white), brown, black, dun. The last is considered soft. 
An old weazened sheik, on escort duty with me, once re- 
cited to me the following verse, which, not knowing 
Arabic, I must assume the Gallic privilege of misspelling 
in English letters. I wrote it down according to the 
sound, and got a dragoman who knew a little Arabic, and 
spoke French with a most un- Parisian brogue, to translate 
it for me. The sheik said it was the production of Antar, 
a celebrated Bedouin emir — a prince and poet — of many 
ages ago: 

"El zourk merkoub ilamahrah 
Blue horses are steeds for the Emirs, 
Ouar kabham koul ameer ouakoul oali 
And princes and governors ride them; 
Amma elshougre lantarou besedig 
* The sorrel, if they fly, I believe it; 
Bennat elreSh maahn hum zalaly 
The daughters of the wind fly less fast. 
Amma eldouhm zidouhoum aliga 
To the black horses you must give more food; 
Kalouhoum la itmat elliali 
Use them for ambuscades on dark nights. 
Koul elkha'il lilhamra t'baha 
All horses trail behind the bay, 
Mit'l el sit tik dimha el gouari 
Like the Lady the servants serve her." 

Of such equine notions the Arab mind is full. Before 
giving me the rhyme the sheik solemnly informed me that 
the horse wisdom of ages lay concealed therein. The con- 
cealment I believe. I told this sheik one of our own time- 
worn driving rhymes ; but with the dragoman's small 
Latin and less Greek, he did not seem to catch its mean- 
ing : 

"Uphill hurry me not, 
Downhill flurry me noV 
On the level spare me not, 
In the stable forget me not." 



360 QUEER BACKSHEESH 

He may or may not have got the translation correctly ; 
at all events he faintly smiled as if the exchange of verse 
for verse had been an unfair one ; but he was generously 
inclined for the moment and did not claim the balance in 
backsheesh. Next day, however, he did so. That verse 
of his cost me many shekels. And it was apparently with 
a clear conscience that the old sheik took his " present." 
He evidently felt that he had given me a vast deal of 
horse-lore, which in my own country would stand me in 
good stead. 

The Oriental is not necessarily a beggar. If you get 
out into the interior you see little of it — not enough at 
least to be annoying. The cry for backsheesh was created 
and is generally stimulated by the European tourists ; the 
new-comers like to see the native's excitement, as they 
elbow each other to reach the backsheesh - distributing 
"personally conducted" Cookie or Gazer. While the 
Bedouin by no means objects to a " present," he does not 
naturally ask for it by annoying means. But short con- 
tact with the average globe-trotter will spoil any people 
among whom coin is rare. 

One of my friends told me an amusing case of back- 
sheesh to which he fell a victim in Constantinople. He 
went into a tobacco -bazaar to get a package of tobacco 
for smoking. Its value was ten piasters (a piaster is five 
cents or a "nickel"). As he entered he found a solemn 
conclave of Turks sitting cross-legged in a semicircle 
enjoying their coffee and water-pipes. He had been in 
the bazaar before, and thinking he recognized the owner, 
strode up to him and handing him a half-medjidji piece, 
uttered the mystic word which conveyed the idea of the 
article he sought, which, not being a Turk or a smoker, I 
cannot quote. The Moslem calmly received the piece, 
which summarily disappeared in the folds of his volumi- 



"SOLD!" 361 

nous skirts, and then quietly removed his pipe-stem from 
his mouth and pointed with it to another man, who was 
the real owner of the bazaar, and to him my friend re- 
peated the mystic monosyllable. The owner slowly arose, 
got the article and handed it to the purchaser with a 
salaam, and then extended his hand for pay. My friend 
pointed to the Turk to whom he had given the half- 
medjidji and prepared to leave. This individual sat im- 
perturbably there, as if unconscious of what was going 
on. The bazaar owner shook his head and went and 
stood athwart the door. My friend strode upon the de- 
linquent to make him disgorge ; but the Turk quietly 
looked up, again removed his pipe-stem from his mouth, 
and calmly enunciated "backsheesh." "You have made 
me a present ; Allah will reward you !" he meant. My 
friend stood for a moment in doubt whether or not to 
clean out the whole crowd, as, being a big fellow rather 
handy with his mawlej^s, he, might easily have done. 
Then the ludicrousness of the whole affair came over him, 
he burst into a loud laugh, gave the bazaar-owner another 
half-medjidji, and retired, the wiser by quite as much as 
he had lost. Like the open-sesame of the shilling in Eng- 
land, coin as backsheesh is acceptable and accepted in 
every part of the Orient. 



LX 



In feeding and watering the horse the Bedouins seem to 
us to be equally unreasoning as in their veterinary prac- 
tice, unless it be agreed that a horse can stand anything 
he is used to, and that it is well to get him used to 
irregular habits. The fact that the Arabian is often com- 
pelled to go an indefinite time without food or drink 
unquestionably makes him hardy and less apt to suffer 
than an}^ regularly treated animal. In every nation there 
exists peculiar habits. In Switzerland many drivers will 
not water on the road at all, even if the horses have thirty 
or forty miles to do on a stretch. They are " afraid of the 
colic," as they say. 

It is deprivation which hardens a man to deprivation. 
I do not mean that irregular habits will tend to pro- 
long life or give uniform good health. Neither will 
athletics. On the contrary, the man who never overdoes 
anything, be it in exercise or in diet, is the man who is 
apt to live the longest and suffer the least from disease. 
It is professors in colleges and clergymen who stand at 
the head of the longevity tables. But what will kill the 
professor or the clergyman is child's play to the Indian, 
who starves for two or three days and then gorges like an 
anaconda. The Arabian for this same reason will go all 
day in the hot sun and never ask for water — impatiently, 
at least — even in crossing a brook. He is fed and watered 
— apparently regardless of the fact that he is hot or tired — 
in a fashion which would inevitably founder any horse in 




RICH BEDOUIN SHETK 



METHODS OF FEEDING 365 

America. He is given his pail of water and his trough 
full of dry or green food, or whatever else is available, so 
soon as he stops on a journey, or else he is ridden off im- 
mediately after. Quite as often he gets nothing at all. I 
have seen horses ridden all day, and have camped at noon 
Avith them near by a stream, without any one trying to 
water them, because they had no bucket and the banks 
were high. It would never occur to a Bedouin to carry a 
skin-pail with him. But the horses seemed used to such 
neglect, and never even whinnied for the w T ater gurgling 
past them. At other times I have seen horses fed at very 
short intervals — at almost every stop. This sort of thing 
in civilized regions sounds quite foolish ; but what is one 
horse's food is another horse's poison. 

As a rule the Arabian has a sound appetite. When it 
fails after a hard pull, his master resorts to all kinds of 
queer devices to make him eat. He does not rub his ears 
and legs to restore his disturbed circulation as we would 
do, but tweaks and twists his ears pretty roughly, and 
cuffs him about the head ; he ties knots in his forelock, 
and pulls him about by it ; he pulls out and twists his 
tongue, and rubs a handful of feed over it. The rationale 
of all this is as hard to decipher as the whipping a 
Russian horse gets if he refuses to eat. But then the 
knout is a cure-all in Eussia; there is no knout among 
the Arabs. 

The food is much as in the rest of the Orient. Barley 
is the bulk of the dry food ; beans, of which Cyprus 
exports vast quantities ; oats, cut up, straw and all ; plain 
straw cut up ; clover-hay ; green clover of the first crop. 
Barley, fed all over the East, gives a distinctly disagreeable 
odor to the droppings, but it is a hardy food. It is much 
used in California. 

The Syrian horse has the same peculiarities as his broth- 



366 WEIGHT OF ARABIANS 

ers in Africa. He weighs little for his height, and yet 
without appearing over leggy. Officials in the East are 
so very unreliable that I do not feel that I have arrived 
at a just estimate of the weight of the Arabian horse. I 
have had several put on the scales ; but when a horse of 
more than fifteen hands, which I should gauge at over 
eight hundred pounds, is said to weigh only four hundred 
and eighty -eight, as was declared to me on one occa- 
sion, I am disinclined to credit the accuracy of the scales 
or weigher, or of both. The Arabian has a round, well- 
coupled, but exceedingly small barrel, no breadth of shoul- 
der or haunch, and in Syria has smaller bone than in 
Egypt. From behind he is knife-blady. Still, thorough- 
bred bone weighs heavy ; a cubic inch of a racer's shin- 
bone weighs three or four times as much as a cubic inch 
of the more porous bone of the bulky brewer's dray-horse. 
In most respects the Arabian is built to weigh little and 
do much for his weight ; but I must still hold him to 
four-fifths or over the weight of a similar animal at home. 
The same applies to donkeys. I have been told that a 
certain donkey weighed only two hundred pounds when 
I was certain he weighed two hundred and seventy-five to 
three hundred pounds. 

The Arabian is generally in good flesh. He more rarely 
loses his roundness than our horses do. This comes in 
part from his having so small a framework to fill out. It 
is easy to keep a narrow-hipped horse fat. His legs and 
feet are as near perfect as may be. The reason has al- 
ready been given — that he stands day and night on the 
ground. No Oriental stable has a floor, unless rarely 
that of a pacha or an emir, so that the diseases of the 
hoof from which we suffer are not apt to be found. He 
is, moreover, not generally called on all day and every 
day to 'ammer, 'ammer, 'ammer on the 'ard, 'igh road, 




SYRIAN WOMAN CN AN ASS 



SHOEING 369 

so that his legs remain sound ; and his weight saves him 
when he does have to do such work. His life out of 
doors or in open stables gives him fresh air at all times, 
and his lungs remain good. He has been kept under nat- 
ural conditions for generations, and the result is a nat- 
urally sound beast. He is shod with the Arabian plate. 
In Syria the Frank shoe is very rarely seen. The plate 
is the clumsiest device imaginable — thick, heavy, and 
awkward. Except for a hole about an inch in diameter 
in the centre, it covers the entire foot. The toe is curved 
upward, and by wear grows more curved ; the heel like- 
wise curves upward so as to cover the entire frog almost 
up to the coronet. We like to see the foot rest flat on 
the ground, and the frog, if not touching the ground, at 
least close to it. The Syrian horse has the plate curved 
upward at the back so that the frog, though resting on 
the plate, is high off the ground, and the animal looks 
as if he were treading on tiptoe. I at first mistook the 
tiptoe step behind as an indication of spavin. We should 
consider such shoeing as bad for the sinews. After the 
shoe has been on six or eight weeks, the horse travels 
very much, as if his feet were balled with snow. He 
is stepping on a sort of curved surface, and on less than 
one -third of the face of the shoe at all times. It is 
not a natural position for the foot. The hind toes are 
generally worn off square. You may always assume the 
foot to be good ; but you can see nothing of it except the 
outside wall without taking off the plate. This horror 
of a shoe the Arabian carries from four to six months! 
To shoe a horse every month seems absurd enough to 
a Bedouin. The shoe is held in place by six enormous 
hand-made nails driven near together^ three on either side, 
about half-way back from the toe. The nails are driven 
so that the clinches are in a group, so close that a quarter- 

24 



370 RIDING OF WOMEN 

dollar piece will cover them, and generally protrude. De- 
spite this clumsy device, the little fellow rarely cuts, and 
the texture of the wall is so tough that the nails nev- 
er break it away, even after months. In the desert the 
horse is supposed to be generally unshod; but enormous 
stretches of the desert, so-called, are a mass of broken 
stone, like a badly -laid and unrolled macadamized road, 
only ten times worse ; for such places he must be shod. 

The women of the people in Syria ride astride a pad, 
with long stirrups or none. They frequently use the 
men's saddle. There is nothing odd about their seat as 
about that of their Egyptian sisters. They seem much at 
home on horseback, though it is the ass which is especially 
their mount. 

The various Arabians I have ridden have been excellent 
of their kind. When not spoiled by or for the English 
tourists by being taught to trot and jog, they have had 
easy gaits, nice mouths, and good manners. Many of 
them have for their size a good deal in front of you, and 
give you the impression of carrying you easily, though 
they are usually much under fifteen hands, and weigh 
little for their inches. They have fine heads and necks, 
little delicate ears which are lively but not nervous, and 
a general air of good-nature and ability to go. But they 
do not give one the same sense of immense power which 
a rangy thorough-bred will do, in magnificence of stride or 
in the general action of head and shoulders as he gallops 
away from under you. Except for the habit of throwing 
up the head, a trick bred of gag-bits, the Arabians are 
most agreeable to mount. If you will get one used to a bit 
and bridoon, which is easy to be done, he will come " in 
hand " quicker than most of our horses and carry his head 
just right. Still, it remains true that in gaits the Arabians 
lag far behind our racer in stride, far behind our Southern 



lb 




POOR BEDOUINS OF MOAB 



ROUGH COATS 3*73 

saddle- beasts in training. As you look at them they ap- 
pear tall ; when you come to mount your foot goes read- 
ily into the stirrup, while at home you must usually 
stretch well up to get the left foot in. Their small barrel 
is proven by the fact that the immense amount of padding 
under the saddle and flaps does not spread your legs too 
much. At home we like a saddle-flap to be close to the 
horse's side. It rarely is so in the Orient. 

The climate of Syria is chilly in winter, and the horse 
of the desert puts on almost as long a coat as the bronco 
of our north-western plains. In the spring, until he has 
scoured off this coat on the fresh grass, he is a lamentable 
object to look upon. The old flea-bitten gray mare in the 
illustration shows small signs of blood in her staring coat 
and woful appearance ; but in a few weeks she may be as 
glossy as silk, despite her years ; and perchance she can 
now out-travel many a May-bird. The Bedouin spear is 
quite a feature of this part of the world. Its great length 
reconciles one to the historically stated size of the Mace- 
donian sarissa — twenty-one feet. It seems as if one could 
scarcely use so unwieldy a weapon, but in it the Bedouin 
reposes almost as much confidence as in his fire-arm ; and 
in view of the common condition of the latter it is no 
wonder. The background shows the stony upland com- 
mon in the desert. The camel' s-hair tent is a family in- 
heritance ; it is almost indestructible. 

The clothes of the Bedouin are much like those of all 
Arabs, but the tout ensemble lacks the grace which the 
burnoose lends to his cousin of Algeria and Tunis. The 
garments are mere bags, as elsewhere, either upsicledown 
or right side up. The trousers have already been sarto- 
rially noticed, though there be many styles of these, from 
the skirt-bags of the Syrian to the peg-tops of the Jew. 
The upper garments are strictly on the same pattern, with 



374 HANDSOME MEN 

holes cut at the bottom of the to-be-inverted bag for arms 
and head, and a slit in front, from the neck down, for 
ease of putting on. Much may be added to the bag in 
the way of embroidery and other ornament, but the pat- 
tern remains. The Bedouin does not generally wear nether 
bags like the African, though the Syrian of the towns is 
wont to do so ; his upper bags are long and various, and 
he wears as many as the season demands, or his purse 
affords. 

The Bedouin has the same fine physique that the no- 
mad Arab everywhere boasts. It might be said, with 
slight fear of exaggeration, that, on the whole — bar those 
who are ground down by misery — the Arab is the hand- 
somest man on earth. In mere beauty most critics would 
be apt to put the Hindoo first ; but he lacks the alert man- 
liness of the Arab. Like his horse, the latter partakes of 
the thorough-bred character. The standing, walking, run- 
ning, lounging Arab is graceful, erect, alert, pleasing ; and 
his brown skin, when you know him, becomes singularly 
attractive. Even when sitting cross-legged, he is as pictu- 
resque in figure as in costume. But when squatting on 
his hams, in the way all semi-chairless nations sit — as the 
poor w r hites sit in our Southern States — he loses his 
flavor ; and yet it must be a most convenient position. 
One can take it anywhere, at any time, be apparently 
quite at ease, and have but the feet touching the ground. 
It is a distinct loss to our comfort that we are not taught 
this habit, as well as to sit cross-legged, in our youth. It 
does not prevent one's using benches and chairs ; it merely 
adds an additional and ubiquitous means of taking rest. 
The dignity of the cross-legged seat is generally acknowl- 
edged ; one might dispute that of the squat. 

We ought not to take leave of the Orient proper without 
a word about the palanquin rider. In a land where there 




PALANQUIN CAMEL 



PALANQUINS 377 

are no roads, where all travel and traffic is by saddle and 
sumpter- beasts, the palanquin is the equivalent of our 
coupe. It is by no means as uncomfortable as it appears. 
Comfort is relative. Am Oriental lady cannot take her 
ease and go so far as she might in a Pullman-car, or eke 
a travelling carriage over smooth roads ; but on a camel 
one can journey ten hours a day, at an average of three 
miles an hour, with great comfort, over the merest mount- 
ain paths. When you try to double up in speed you must 
be habituated to the motion from childhood to stand the 
fatigue. A single camel palanquin is not as luxurious as 
one borne by two camels ; but there is much room for 
change of position in even this. The palanquin looks 
unwieldy, but being made of reed and wicker-work it is 
light, and with its two travellers will not weigh more 
than four hundred pounds. The porter-camel can carry 
five hundred ; a runner not much over half the weight, if 
he is to go far and fast. 



LXI 



Much of what has been said about the Arab in Syria 
applies to the Arab of western Asia Minor. He has per- 
haps not as marked characteristics, neither has his steed, 
but both bear quite a distinct resemblance to the Syrian. 
Wherever the horse is at his best, so, barring the lack of 
civilization, is the Arab ; but, whatever may be said in 
favor of the Arab, we can never forget that he has ruined, 
agriculturally, financially, socially, morally, every country 
he has conquered. Even the breeding of the Arabian 
horse cannot make up for this wholesale havoc. The 
Moors, who at one time accomplished so much, and left 
their impress on so many lands, seem to have been the 
exception which proves the rule. Morocco of to-day, 
Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, Egypt, Arabia, Syria, are all a des- 
ert in comparison to what we know from history that they 
were in olden days. Nor, with the character of the Arab 
as he has shown it in the past, does it seem probable that 
any improvement will be made in the future. Whether all 
this be not due to religious causes rather than racial, it 
may be hard to say. The Turk has accomplished the same 
devastation. 

The Mohammedan must, however, be given credit for 
exemplary fidelity in some matters, as for his annual fast 
during the month of Ramazan. From an hour before 
sunrise until the sun has set he may neither eat, nor drink, 
nor smoke ; and, strange to say, for a solid month he hon- 
estly does this thing, though he makes merry all through 



m 



MOHAMMEDANS 381 

the nights as a compensation. In Constantinople, should 
a man openly break his fast, he would be arrested, and 
fined or imprisoned. The fast is not obligatory in the 
case of weak men or of women or youth. But when a 
lad grows to be twelve or thirteen his soul rests not until 
he has won permission to keep Kamazan. On working- 
men it is hard, especially when Eamazan comes in the hot 
months, as, being by the Moslem lunar calendar made a 
shifting feast, it does about a third of the time. On sol- 
diers it is still more hard ; and though in war-time Kam- 
azan is more honored in the breach than in the observ- 
ance — much as Sunday was in our Civil War in the way 
of battles — in times of peace the sentry does his rounds 
unfed and thirsty. 

I have a hearty respect for the best Mohammedan 
element. I have found them as liberal, sensible, and 
gentle-minded as the lower classes can be fanatical — a 
fact I ascertained to my sorrow when they stoned me and 
my son out of Hebron last year. One day in Jerusalem 
I had a long and interesting discussion with an Arab 
gentleman, which drifted from travelling to social matters, 
from social to political, and from political to religious. I 
found no grain of prejudice in the man. To him, as to all 
Moslems, Abram was one of the great and holy men of 
the past, Christ was one of the wisest teachers. " But," 
said he, most reasonably, " we Mohammedans do not think 
that you Christians of the present day teach the just and 
beautiful doctrines of Jesus. We look around us and we 
see many sects, each expounding a separate dogma ; we 
look at the Mohammedans, and we find them believing 
absolutely the same doctrines in every section of the 
world. The Koran means but one thing to all of us ; 
there have practically never been quarrels as to what it 
contains. So ought it to be with the Bible, which, to me, 



382 CHRISTIAN SECTS 

so far as relates to the teachings of Christ, appears to be 
plain and simple, and I have studied it much. But is 
it so ? I go into one of your most sacred temples, the 
Church of the Holy Sepulchre, to search for the simple 
truths I find in the Gospels, and what do I see? One 
altar erected in one section of the edifice by the Arme- 
nians, another in another section by the Greeks, a third 
in a third section by the Copts ; again one by the Koman 
Catholics. No priest or communicant of any one of these 
sects will religiously mix with one of any other ; and at 
Easter, the most holy day for all for them, I see the theo- 
logical rivalry of these several sects at so white a heat 
that the Government is compelled to put a company or 
two of Turkish troops — Mohammedans — within the por- 
tals of this Christian church to prevent bloodshed on the 
very steps of the altar. This leads me to think, not that 
the Christ was wanting in the true spirit of prophecy, but 
that His followers have lost touch with His true teach- 
ings ; it leads me to think that true Christianity had dis- 
appeared in the maze of doctrinal rivalry. And when 
again I contemplate the fact that half of the Christian 
world has seceded from the mother -church — I refer to 
the Protestants — that this seceding* half is divided into 
yet more sects, all differing in many points of belief — 
well," he continued, with a smile, " I am reconciled to our 
one undisputed belief, which seems to suit both the lowly 
and those who think — at least, as well as what the Chris- 
tians of to-day can teach us." What was there for me to 
say? He had covered the ground completely. I had no 
answer. 

There is not much in Syria proper which distinguishes 
it from Palestine, but the farther north you go the far- 
ther you get away from the perfect type of horse ; the 
farther east you go the more you lose the stanchness 



VIN DU PAYS 383 

which characterizes the Arabian. You might call the 
Arabian desert the centre-point from which the horse has 
got distributed ; at too great a distance, without special 
efforts to keep it pure, the stock gets diluted or lost. If 
you wander, for instance, towards Kurdistan, you will find 
a tough little horse, but he is no longer the Arabian of 
the desert. He is more of a steppes runt. There is the 
same peculiar family resemblance in the common horse 
of almost all countries which there is everywhere to the 
vin du pays. The bronco and Medoc express the types, 
which vary as the inhabitants vary. Better care produces 
a better article. We see the little mean Texan grow fat 
and handsome when put into the stable of the polo-play- 
ing swell; we should again see him, not less tough but 
the very picture of wretchedness, if put for a month into 
the brutal hands of an Indian or a Mexican. We see the 
excellent Chianti of Italy degenerate into the vile pitch- 
flavored Kftam ptTdivuTo of Greece. So with the horse or 
the wine of the country everywhere. 

Some of the oddest equestrian habits which a horseman 
has ever imagined are to be found in lands abutting on 
the home of the Arabian, though, indeed, the Arab has 
himself enough of oddities. The Kurds ride a tree cov- 
ered with plaited straw, quite flat, and padded with blank- 
ets. This they never remove from their horses, except oc- 
casionally to dry it out. The horse is kept saddled day 
and night, summer and winter. This seems incredible, 
but it is literally true. In Turkestan the horse's entire 
body, from the ears back, is kept covered up with the bib- 
lical number of blankets — seven — which he likewise wears 
at all times, and which are supposed to sweat him out and 
keep him in condition. The saddle is placed on the top 
of these. The habits of horsemen in such countries vary 
after a curious fashion. The Kurds sit in their straw, pad- 



384 PERSIAN HORSES 

like saddle, with very short stirrups, and employ a severe 
bit. The Circassians also ride in a straw-covered saddle, 
but with an exceptionally high cantle and pommel, and 
with extra long stirrup-leathers, forked-radish or cowboy 
style. The Cossack again rides with short stirrup, as well 
as the Persian, and neither the latter nor the Circassian 
uses, as a rule, a bit, but a simple rope halter ; while the 
Cossack uses an easy bit. Wherever the Arabian is in 
his glory you find substantially the same seat, already 
described ; as soon as you wander away from the Arabian 
type you find as great a variety of equine habits as of 
dress. 

The Persian horse, although a neighbor, appears to be 
a creature of quite different blood. He is taller and leg- 
gier than the Arabian, and has comparatively little stam- 
ina. The Kurds and Turcomans use a horse which is said 
to be the produce of Arabian sires on Persian dams, and 
this horse seems to gain the endurance of the desert blood, 
which it sadly needs. One does not expect much from 
Persians, and the horse corresponds to one's notions. 

To wander for a moment while on the subject of Persia, 
it is said that when available funds run short in that 
despot-ridden land, the governors of the several provinces 
are paid by a firman granting them control of a given 
number of lashes. A viceroy is appointed with a salary 
and emoluments of, say, four thousand lashes per annum. 
He reaches his capital, and after making himself agree- 
able to his new subjects and getting settled in his duties, 
which are generally confined to ascertaining out of whom 
he can squeeze moneys, he sends word to the rich men 
of his district that he shall begin to apportion his salary. 
" To you, M. or N., of the wisdom and generosity of His 
Most Gracious Majesty the Shah, whom Allah preserve ! 
and of my own loving-kindness, I award but two hundred 



LASHES AS SALARY 385 

of my four thousand annual lashes. These will be duly 
administered for your soul's health to-morrow at sunset. 
Allah Hu ! Great is the Shah !" The clause to be read 
between the lines is : "If you desire to commute, my dear 
fellow, I shall be most happy to welcome you. I shall be 
in at almost any time to-day or to-morrow morning." 
M. or N., who may be a wealthy trader or a noble brig- 
and, naturally enough prefers to pay with his purse rather 
than his person ; he loses no time in accepting the polite 
invitation, and no doubt after interminable discussion as 
to amount and terms, endless gesticulation, and unlimited 
coffee, finishes by buying himself off with a good round 
sum, payable in whatsoever coin is current — flocks and 
herds, jewels, women, slaves, or grain. The viceroy re- 
peats the stratagem on others, and finds himself rich in 
short measure, and is glad enough to go halves with his 
royal master. In a country where the Government steals 
from every rich citizen, where these do the same by the 
first comer, where brigandage pure and simple is the daily 
rule, this to us novel salary-scheme works to a charm. 
The annual budget is an easy one to cipher out. At all 
events, the method suits the people — and the Shah. 



LXII 

One is always led to imagine that the Arabian you find 
in Constantinople — in the imperial stables, or among the 
rich or high in place and power — is the creme de la crerne. 
Bat, in truth, while you do find some very splendid speci- 
mens of horse-flesh under the shadow of the Sublime Porte, 
most of the best of them are not Arabians. I have rarely 
seen a finer lot of mounts than at Selamlik, one beautiful 
Friday last April, when His Imperial Majesty, accom- 
panied by his ministers and generals, and escorted by a 
corps d' 'elite of the Turkish army, went from the palace, 
in state, to the mosque, where he might humble himself 
in prayer. 

And let me here interpolate a word about the Sultan. 
His Majesty is currently imagined to allow his ministers 
to do all his work, while he himself lives a life of luxuri- 
ous indolence, moving from one palace to another with his 
large and well-filled harem. The very reverse is the rule. 
The one man in all the Turkish dominions who works 
morning, noon, and night, whose mind never rests from 
effort to carry his people through the difficulties which 
beset bad system and lack of means, is the monarch. The 
ministers work little, the Sultan incessantly. Not only 
is this well understood, but my old schoolmate, hereto- 
fore referred to, is in daily attendance on his Majesty, 
and my ideas, gleaned from him, have given me a hearty 
respect for the personality of the present Bearer of the 
Crescent. Since his accession he has scarcely left his 




A HUNGARIAN THOROUGH- BRED 



HUNGARIAN TROOPERS 389 

palace in Pera; here he labors with honest fidelity to 
effect the impossible ; for the bad Turkish customs are 
like the laws of the Medes and Persians. The system is 
as rotten as the people are hard to teach. Moreover, the 
Sultan is the simplest and most unrequiring man in his 
dominions. The unpretentious courtesy of his personal 
bearing, his apparent lack of egotism, his rather pale, nerv- 
ous, overworked face are dignity itself. I have never 
witnessed a more patriarchal ceremony, or one of higher 
tone than this quiet procession of Selamlik. 

To come back to the horses, I could not recognize in 
many of those I there saw the characteristics of desert 
blood ; I suspected the truth, and was, on inquiry, told 
that they were largely imported or of imported stock. 

The Arabian is not considered heavy enough for the 
Turkish cavalry in Europe ; a Hungarian horse is bought 
or bred for the army, and, to a considerable extent, crossed 
with Arabian blood. It seems most natural to use the 
Arabian as the sire ; but the experiment, I was told, is 
being tried of putting Arabian mares (where they man- 
age to get any but scrubs I do not know) to the stallion 
from Hungary, the latter being largely impregnated by 
the English thorough-bred. This horse is for the man. 
Many of the officers — in Turkey all swells have military 
rank — import well-bred ones from various countries ; and 
though you see a number of typical and very beautiful 
Arabians, especially in the Sultan's stud, you are out of 
the domain of the unalloyed article. And as to general 
grading, one may any day see a lot of saddle-beasts rid- 
den in and out of our Southern towns, which in every 
saddle quality are superior to what I saw at Selamlik. 
The horses would not be splendidly caparisoned, nor the 
riders gorgeously clad, but the style and gait and blood 
would tell the storv. The New York Horse Show is not 



390 TURKISH SEAT 

approached in its exhibit of high grade saddle-horses by 
anything to be found in the Orient. 

His Imperial Majesty, however, rides chiefly Arabians ; 
and in the Selamlik procession there were led after his 
carriage a number of these, all white, richly mounted, and 
with a gold-bedecked blanket thrown over each, so that 
should he choose to return to the palace on horseback 
he might have his selection. The beauty of these horses 
seemed to elicit universal but injudicious admiration ; 
they were more to be admired for their sleek, well- 
groomed appearance, and for their general air of extreme 
docility, than for any qualities they showed in the pro- 
cession. A fine team of white Hanoverians in a low 
hung phaeton was also on hand, in case his Majesty 
should elect to drive himself back to the palace, as on 
this occasion he did. 

The Turkish seat (in Europe at least) is no longer Ori- 
ental. It has become exclusively military. This is natu- 
ral enough in a military autocracy. The English saddle, 
or some modification of it, and the extra long stirrup-leath- 
er — which is a simple perversion of the useful or appro- 
priate in a flat saddle — is the regular thing. The short 
seat has become so universal that it has invaded the im- 
perial stables, and the stud-grooms all ride, in their fancy 
liveries, strictly a la militaire. This is as heartily to be 
condemned as the Frenchman in gala uniform riding a 
to-cover gait. 

On the whole, I do not like the flat saddle for the sol- 
dier. It does not, it is not intended to, give an upright 
seat. The knee is often back of instead of gripping the 
stirrup-leather, and the knee-pad on the saddle-flap might 
as well be on the horse's ears for any good it does with 
such short leathers. The flat saddle is cut for an entirely 
different seat. Hunting produced the English saddle ; its 



MILITARY SEAT 393 

use by a military man is a mere fad. I have seen many 
more " unmilitary " seats — if there still be such a thing— 
since the introduction among soldiers of the English sad- 
dle than before. It seems to breed a loosish seat — I by no 
means say a bad one, but a free-and-easy method — the 
very best in its place, but quite too slipshod for the sol- 
dier. A man naturally leans forward in a flat saddle 
rather than sits erect, and so long as we insist on a soldier 
being well set-up, why not make him ride erect as well? 
The perfect seat and method for a soldier is, I maintain,, 
the one which enables him to preserve an upright, well- 
set-up position in the saddle, to ride with one hand, at 
need without any, to have his sword-arm at all times free, 
and on occasions both. I have nowhere seen so near an 
approach to this seat and method as in the officers of 
our own regular cavalry, and they ride McClellan or 
Whitman saddles. It is quite possible for the soldier to 
have it, and yet not hang down his arm like a pump- 
handle and stick out his thumb, as the merry caricaturist 
will have it that he does. And as to effectiveness, the 
proof of the pudding is in the eating, and it would puzzle 
the best cavalry of any nation to follow some of our 
veteran squadrons across the Bad Lands in pursuit of a 
band of bucks on the war-path, or, for the matter of that, 
to hold head to them when caught. 

A soldier in Europe used to be a soldier, afoot or ahorse- 
back. Now he is not unwont to be a dawdling kind of a 
rider, and he threatens in many places to become as bad 
a footman. Ramrod setting-up and pipe-clay may both 
be overdone; but the new tactics may also go too far in 
relying on individual intelligence and initiative. A good 
setting-up, mounted or not, does a man no harm, and it 
should be conserved for what it is really worth. Officers 
and men both threaten to slouch too much. Because the 



394 GOOD MANNERS 

modern idea is skirmish drill, there is no need to lose the 
military bearing of the old elbow-touch days. I have of 
late abroad seen altogether too many soldiers of all ranks 
with very poor carriage. On the whole, we need never 
be ashamed of the West Point bearing, nor of the man- 
ners of our old regular soldiers. And, by-the-way, my 
friend, did it ever occur to you that, next to the manners 
of a cultured man of the world, the manners of a self- 
respecting old soldier were the best to be found ? Keep 
your eye out and see if I am not right. And then seek 
for the reason. 






LXIII 

Constantinople is now a European city, as well in style 
as in geography. It is fast losing all its Orientalism. 
The fez is the only thing left which is universal. A crowd 
still remains, as of old, " a sea of fezzes." But the origi- 
nal Constantinople leg-gear has begun to cede to the con- 
venience of " pants " — always the first and costly step in 
the downfall of national costumes and customs. Trousers 
are bad enough ; pants are intolerable. Alas, that the 
landing-place of our brave old knee -breeched Puritan an- 
cestors should have been desecrated by a three-dollar pair ! 

In a certain fashion, the trouser is the type of all hu- 
man growth or backsliding. With the loss of the knee- 
breeches we lost the stateliness of the olden times ; with 
the advent of " pants, 1 ' gentlemen have become " gents." 
Wherever, nowadays, men are careful of their trouser 
creases, and of the proper length and flow of the garment 
over the instep, we find the telephone and the electric 
light and art and letters. Where, as in the Orient, the 
matter of six inches in the length of either leg of the 
prevailing trouser is of no material consequence ; where 
the cut of the leg-clothing is quite disregarded, and a re- 
spectable or a rich man may appear in public with a ridic- 
ulous pair of cotton drawers in lieu of the well - brushed 
and well-fitted broadcloth, we find fanaticism, caste, and 
retrogression. May not the trouser be considered a meas- 
ure of human endeavor and success, moral, material, and 
aesthetic ? I submit this as a debatable point. 



396 CONSTANTINOPLE HORSES 

The Turkish cavalryman rides a gelding. The line of 
demarcation in the common use of the stallion and the 
gelding appears to be the Mediterranean and the ^Egean 
Sea ; in other words, in Europe you find the gelding, in 
Asia and Africa the stallion. The Hungarian gelding is 
a larger, bonier horse than the Arabian, averaging, per- 
haps, a scant fifteen two, generally dark in color, with 
fairly good points, but far from the whip -cord legs of 
the Arabian, and a poor tail and head. He is considered 
serviceable. The Arabian cannot be said to be highly 
regarded in Turkey, except as a pleasure horse. Carriage- 
horses are frequently bought among the Russian trotting- 
stock; they are black, and high steppers. The Turkish 
cavalry looks well as a body, but many of the men ride 
poorly. There are a great many Germans among the 
officers, who are doing well for it, but the arm is of re- 
cent erection. 

At another great ceremony, the visit of the Sultan to 
the Treasury in the Old Seraglio on the fifteenth of 
Eamazan, to pray on the mantle of Mohammed, which 
is therein carefully preserved, and only taken out once 
a year, I had a chance to gauge the general run of the 
horses of Constantinople. The world and his wife (or 
rather his wives) were present. Everything on four legs 
turned out. The average struck me as very low. Among 
some exceedingly good ones there were altogether too many 
weedy, wretched little ponies under thirteen hands high. 
The harems of the whole city were on hand, and the at- 
tendants and eunuchs rode trashy stock of the meanest 
description. The livery - stables were emptied to carry 
the in-door female population out for an airing, and I 
doubt if you could have found so many poor specimens of 
the equine race in even a South American city, which is 
saying a great deal. The every-day hack of Constanti- 





■> 



A VETERAN 399 

nople, as can be plainly seen, is an offshoot of Arabia ; 
but I was not favorably impressed by the influence of 
desert blood on the horse under civilized conditions of 
hard work. The average size, weight, and serviceability 
would have been far greater in America. During the 
day I saw but one or two clean, fine -bred Arabians 
among the many thousands out. The army and bureau- 
crats appeared to monopolize the good horses, and there 
was but a small force of cavalry on duty to line the 
streets through which his Majesty passed, so that the 
common stock was the more unduly prominent. 

Many men in Constantinople ride an English saddle, 
but still cling to the enormous Oriental blanket which 
comes back over the horse's loins and is made of a 
long, hairy, woollen fabric, generally red and white. It is 
extremely ugly. The saddle and blanket do not match. 
They represent a transition stage. The plate-shoe through- 
out Turkey in Europe has been almost driven out by the 
French shoe. The plate they used to employ in Turkey, 
unlike the plate of the desert, had as many as six nails 
inside and six outside, sometimes only five, or five outside 
and four inside, well distributed. 

The Sultan's stables contain many fine Arabians. Some 
are extremely old. I saw one which had carried no less 
than four sultans — Abdul-Medjid, way back in 1860; and 
Abdul -Aziz, Murad, and Abdul - Hamid since. I was 
presented with an interesting series of pictures of them. 
Not a few have the curious marks on barrel and haunch 
and arm, which, by a queer superstition, are often inflicted 
on Arabians " to make them gallop faster," as they say ; 
though what this means I am unable to tell, unless they 
give each two or three year old one special test (as is 
done in racing stables), and select those who show up the 
best ; and to make them go the faster use a knife-blade 



400 



UGLY SCARS 



rowel. Others explain the cuts in a different way, but it 
is a blind matter at best, less explicable even than the 
white foot business in Syria. The cut on the barrel is a 
long and semicircular one from below upward, as if made 
by the heel armed with a vicious spur. Into the cut is 
rubbed (again they say) powdered glass to make an ugly 




OLD ARAB OF THE SULTAN 's STABLE ON ARABIAN 



scar, much as the German student indulges in unlimited 
Kneipen to make the cuts received at PauTcen heal up 
slowly and into rough, and therefore much esteemed scars. 
On a white horse the scar I have described is peculiarly 
distressing. The other cuts are straight horizontal ones 
half-way up the buttock and arm. There seems to be 



AN OLD ARAB 401 

neither rhyme nor reason in the trick. We brand a 
bronco to mark ownership; these cuts are a mere outcome 
of silly superstition. 

Here is the counterfeit presentment of an old Arab 
who belongs to the imperial stables, and who is sent 
from time to time to the desert to bring back horses. He 
retains his normal dress and bestrides a fine specimen of 
a high -type Arabian. Most of the stucl- grooms wear a 
costume as little like an Arab as can be imagined, much 
ornamented, and handsome enough in its way. The jack- 
et and leg -gear are the Syrian, and highly wrought in 
gold. The feet are incased in boots. The fez is worn, 
as with every one in Turkey, from the Sultan to the 
sweep. 



LXIV 

The Greek in some respects approaches more to the 
European than to the Oriental civilization, but in his 
equestrianism he may well be added to the latter, though 
he properly belongs to neither. There is perhaps no 
odder -looking rider than a Greek peasant on a pack- 
saddle. The saddle is made so as to be equally adapted to 
pack or to riding, and while fairly good for the one is 
wretched for the other. Unlike those of all other peo- 
ples, this saddle, instead of being placed in the middle of 
the back or towards the rump, is made to fit so that the 
centre of gravity lies directly over the place where the 
English pommel sits — i.e., exactly back of the top of the 
withers. When the Greek rides this horror of a saddle 
he is perched directly over the horse's withers, with his 
legs hanging way in front of the animal's. The sad- 
dle comes no farther rearward than the middle of the 
back. The seat, owing to its width, is so uncomforta- 
ble that the man is apt to ride sideways more often than 
astride. 

Just where this trick originated it is hard to say. The 
common Oriental habit is to get the load too far to the 
rear. In fact, with donkeys it is usual for natives to ride 
on the weakest part of the back, just over the kidneys, 
because the place where the beast is most limber is the 
easiest to the man. With the Greek we have the horse's 
fore-legs loaded down to a dangerous extent, while the 
haunches have less than their fair share of work. A 



THE MODERN GREEK 403 

stumble would be far from a luxury, with the freight all 
in the bows, to speak nautically. 

The Greek dress, until you get used to it, is too lady- 
like to be pleasing. The close-falling kilt of Scotland is 
natural enough. But as in Greece the kilt is made in 
such ample folds, and starched to so stiff an extent that it 
stands out absolutely like a ballet-girl's skirt, one never 
quite gets rid of a certain flavor of hermaphroditism, so to 
speak, until one has long been among the people. It is 
bad enough when the Greek wears the picturesque Thessa- 
lian leggings; but when, as in Albania, he wears what 
the old Rollo books used to call " pantelettes," one's ideas 
are turned topsy-turvy, even more than in Tunis, where 
one sees a pretty Jewess calmly parading up and down 
the bazaars in tight trousers and short sack-coat, all 
wonderfully wrought in gold embroidery. In either case, 
unless your judgment is very firmly fixed, you have to 
sit down and reflect for a moment, or pull yourself to- 
gether in some other fashion. 

The Greek is a high-tuned fellow. Though the blood 
of the modern Greek is rather Albanian — as also is his 
dress — than traceable to the heroic Hellene of twenty cen- 
turies ago, no prince of the blood can be more proud of 
his lineage, which he deludes himself into believing to be 
purity itself. The Greek peasant will strut by you with 
the most kingly air ; he looks down with a kindly but ill- 
disguised contempt upon the American tourist who could 
buy up a whole village of his ilk and scarcely know he 
owned it. He has many really fine qualities, this Greek, 
coupled to some we are not wont to admire, such as in- 
ordinate vanity. And in his wonderful garb on a hard- 
trotting horse, so near the withers that he gets threefold 
the motion he would get if he sat in the middle of the 
back, he is truly a spectacle for gods and men. 



404 A TREELESS WASTE 

The Greek rides the veriest runt of a horse, though it 
has endurance. The fine little Thessalian chunk, of the 
era of Phidias, which was certainly alive and kicking in 
the days of Alexander — for was it not he that won the 
battles of the great Macedonian? — has long since disap- 
peared. No wonder. The forests were all chopped down 
aeons ago ; as a consequence the brooks and rivers dried 
up and the land gradually became a desert. This is the 
condition everywhere in the Orient. It is a treeless, 
waterless waste. Thousands of places which, like Jericho 
when Antony made a present of it to Cleopatra, we know 
to have been among the most beautiful spots outside of 
Paradise, are now a howling wilderness of sand and rock. 
Any American who has travelled through the Orient 
must assuredly return home an advocate for forestry laws, 
a pronounced enemy to the ruthless lumberman who is 
fast sapping the sources of our noble rivers, and well 
equipped to vote for making public reservations of such 
essential forest-stretches as the Adirondacks or the wil- 
derness around Moosehead Lake. It is only a question of 
time, if the destruction of our forests continues, when the 
Hudson Kiver will cease to be navigable, when the beau- 
tiful granite streams of the White Mountains will be tor- 
rents in winter and dry beds in summer. The trouble 
lies in the fact that we Americans either will not believe 
this fact or that we work on the principle of after us the 
deluge — of which " the devil take the hindmost " is the 
more common equivalent. If we go on, it will be "after 
us hades." Oh, for another Peter the Hermit to preach a 
crusade on the preservation of our forests ! 

So soon as the land dried up, so did all that it produced 
and nourished. To-day Greece is fit, on all its hill-sides, to 
feed nothing but sheep and goats. The latter eat every 
shoot of vegetation ; trees cannot grow. The Greek com- 




MODERN GREEK COSTUME 



THESSALIAN CHUNKS 407 

plains that he has no water for irrigation, but he will not 
work for the future ; he will not only not plant trees, but 
will not conserve those which themselves strive to grow. 
So soon as a pine-tree struggles up, as many do, to a size 
big enough to produce resin, he scores it to death to secure 
enough of its life-blood to keep his nasty wine, heedless of 
the fact that if he would let a few grow bigger, they 
would produce resin in abundance and water besides. 

So died out the noble little Thessalian, whom Homer 
has immortalized in the horses of Diomed with flowing 
manes, and to whom Phidias has lent eternity on the splen- 
did frieze of the Parthenon ; who has written his own 
name in history on the pages which narrate the heroism 
at the Granicus, the struggle for life at Arbela, the 
charges seven times repeated at the Hydaspes. By-the- 
way, it is rather curious that, accurate as the horses of 
Phidias are in the sequence of step which the photograph 
alone has revealed to modern artists, they are faulty in 
projecting the fore-feet so far beyond the head. No horse 
can hold his head so high as to throw his fore-feet far be- 
yond it. In no photographs, even of high-headed horses, 
are the fore-feet in any gait even out to a line dropped 
perpendicularly from the horse's nose. But for all that, 
Phidias came nearer to giving us the anatomically correct 
action of the horse than any one prior to mechanical 
Muy bridge ever succeeded in doing. 



LXV 

On the Adriatic coast of Turkey, in Albania and Dal- 
matia, the horse of the country is the same small mean 
runt you meet with in every poverty-stricken land. He 
is not without his advantages. He eats little, needs and 
gets no grooming, stabling, or care ; has a vast deal of 
endurance — of blows, neglect, and ill-treatment — and car- 
ries as big a load for his size as a bronco. But the bronco 
can run and keep it up ; the little country brute of the 
Eastern Adriatic can barely work out of a walk ; nor has 
he any gaits. He is a poor lot, much like the population 
which breeds him. 

The origin of the best strain of Arabian blood has been 
related by some romancer. While Mohammed was fight- 
ing his way from his humble origin to greatness, he once 
was compelled for three days to lead his corps of twenty 
thousand cavalry without a drop of water. At last from 
a hill-top they descried the silver streak of a distant river, 
and after a short farther march, Mohammed ordered his 
trumpeter to blow the call to dismount and loose the 
horses. The poor brutes, starving for water, at once 
sprang into a mad gallop towards the longed-for goal. 
No sooner loosened than there came the alarm — false as 
it happened — of a sudden ambush. To horse! was in- 
stantly blown and repeated by a hundred bugles. But 
the demand was too great; the parched throats were not 
to be refused ; the stampede grew wilder and wilder, as 
twenty thousand steeds pushed desperately for the river- 



FAITHFUL MARES 409 

banks before them. Of all the frantic crowd but five 
mares responded to the call. To these noble steeds duty 
was higher than suffering. They turned in their tracks, 
came bravely back, pleading in their eyes and anguish in 
their shrunken flanks, and stood before the prophet. Love 
for their masters and a sense of obedience had conquered 
their distress, but their bloodshot eyes told of a fearful 
torment, the more pathetic for their dumbness. The dan- 
ger was over, the faithful mares were at once released, 
but Mohammed selected these five for his own use, and 
they were the dams of one of the great races of the 
desert. From them, goes on the legend, have sprung the 
best of the Arabian steeds. It can, however, scarcely be 
claimed that the average horse of the land of the rising 
sun comes up to this ideal. He must have been bred from 
the nineteen thousand nine hundred and ninety-five. 

On the whole, I must sum up the horse of the Orient 
as of far from the high grade which is generally under- 
stood. The splendid specimens are less splendid than our 
prize-winners or our well-known sires ; the common herd 
is common enough. The general run is exceedingly at- 
tractive, but scarcely as good performers as our own equal 
class. Beyond the borders of civilization they are not 
higher than the bronco ; in the busy haunts of men they 
are distinctly lower than our own common horse, certain- 
ly so for the purposes of our varied commercial and social 
demands. The exceptional specimens, which partake of 
the peculiar grace of carriage of the Arabian of art, are 
more pleasing than a similar creature would be with us ; 
but to the horseman's eye their points will score for less. 
Size being taken into consideration throws the balance 
clearly to our side. 

The rider of the Orient is what man is everywhere when 
he lives in daily communion with his horse, but he is not 



410 THE BEST HORSEMEN 

an intelligent horseman. If you want to select a score of 
men who, after short practice at every style, could show 
the best performance in racing, hunting, polo - playing, 
road - riding, herding, cavalry drill or work, escort duty, 
fantaslya riding, or in any of the usual pleasures or duties 
of the Occident or the Orient, these men are far and away 
easier to find in the States than in any country where the 
influence of the Arabian is still predominant. 



LXVI 

Before we leave this interesting part of the world to 
seek for oddities in riding among the Brahmans and the 
Buddhists, let us cast a glance at a rider who, from our 
childhood, has been known to us as a synonym of all that 
is wild and terrible — the Cossack. 

Both Turkey and Kussia have a large force of irregular 
mounted troops. These are not for the most part in con- 
stant service, but hold themselves in readiness to mobilize 
at any moment. Such are the army corps of Kurdish 
cavalry in Asia Minor ; and many of the Cossack troops 
are agriculturists and soldiers at the same time. While 
organized on substantially the same basis, so much heed 
is paid to tribal habits that no two bodies of these troops 
are quite identical. 

The boys of the Cossack villages from early youth look 
eagerly forward to their four years of active service, and 
seek to prepare for distinguishing themselves while in the 
ranks. All Cossacks consider horses as their proudest 
possession. They have plenty of them, and when he joins 
his squadron the recruit is held to furnish everything but 
his rifle. As against this he is allowed certain marked 
privileges beyond the common peasantry who enlist in the 
infantry, and what he loses in service is wont to be re- 
placed by the Government. 

The training of the Cossack lad is a constant prepara- 
tion for what is considered most valuable in their peculiar 
tactics — that is, to throw his horse instantly, and use him 



412 TRAINING OF THE COSSACK 

as a rampart from behind which he can fire ; to mount 
rapidly and attack with the sabre ; to use the sabre in any 
position or at any gait ; to fire rapidly and with good aim 
at any speed and in any position ; to turn from the attack 
at a gallop and seek shelter. In order to accomplish this 
end, the Cossacks are as lads exercised in horse-vaulting, 
which they call jigitqfka, and this exercise is carried to 
a high degree of excellence. 

The ambitious Cossack lad, like the Indian, soon gets 
to know every horse in his village, and the adaptability 
of each one to the quick turns and twists of the jigitofka. 
Surefootedness is a prime quality in his little steed, for on 
it the Cossack must rely in many of his vaulting exer- 
cises ; speed comes next, coupled with endurance ; and in 
other qualities he agrees with what all horse-lovers deem 
essential. 

There is a preparatory camp of instruction for these 
Cossack lads when they have attained a certain age and 
skill ; and when a boy returns from it he is called a jigit 
or vaulter. At this camp emulation is rampant, and the 
exercises call out all the lads can do. They pick up ob- 
jects from the ground ; they jump obstacles standing in 
the saddle, or with their shoulder in the saddle and feet in 
air ; they throw their horses at a gallop, or, strictly speak- 
ing, they stop them suddenly and make them lie down, a 
thing which is done so rapidty that the first phrase almost 
describes the feat ; they pick up wounded men when going 
at speed; they mount and dismount at full gallop; they leap 
from one horse to another ; they ride two or more men on 
one horse and change horses at speed ; they perform in 
petto all they must do in active service on a large scale. 
All these things are what our Indians do, varied in man- 
ner to suit a people equally wild, but of a different class. 
The throwing of horses — but not at speed — was at one 




X 






COSSACK OF THE GUARD — FIELD TRIM 



THE COSSACK SADDLE 415 

time introduced into some of our cavalry regiments ; 
Indians always do it. 

In addition to the vaulting exercises, the Cossack ex- 
cels, especially in the Caucasus, in the djereet, or dart- 
throwing at a gallop. This is an old Oriental practice, 
recently revived. The rider gallops up to the target, 
which is a ball or a ring, casts his dart at some twenty 
paces, and immediately turns to seek shelter. Except 
among the Tartars, no people plays djereet so w^ell as the 
Cossacks. 

The Cossack bit is usually an easy one, though there be 
Cossacks and Cossacks, and they cover all Eussia in Eu- 
rope and in Asia, and all Turkey in Asia. The saddle, in 
lieu of being placed as close to the horse's back as it can 
be, is so constructed as to make the man sit very high 
above the horse — what seems to us absurdly high — and 
this height is increased as much as possible by blankets. 
The stirrups are so hung as to bring the rider's toes on a 
line directly under his ear, and his knees are much bent. 
He holds on by his heels and calves, not his knees. The 
Cossacks defend this seat by saying that when so placed 
the rider is compelled to learn to balance himself, and that 
the seat is consequently firmer. This latter opinion can- 
not be maintained. Nothing can give you as much firm- 
ness as closeness to the horse ; the point is not really worth 
discussion. The Cossack habit creates a difficulty in order 
to train the man by making him overcome it. That the 
best training consists in overcoming obstacles is true, but 
this does not make the balance seat any better because 
the saddle is high. You might as well assert that a rope- 
dancer is more secure on his rope than on the ground. 

The Cossacks also claim that their seat is easier on long 
marches, but our cavalry experience belies this. The Cos- 
sacks have not made well-recorded marches equal to ours, 



416 THE COSSACK'S ABILITY TO RIDE 

so far as I can learn. On the whole, the seat does not 
appeal to me as a good one. I firmly believe that the 
same amount of work devoted to a seat more like our own 
would produce better results. But there is no denying 
the Cossacks the ability to ride, and as a semi-civilized 
light cavalry they are unequalled. 






LXYII 

It is related of a naturally reticent but observant old 
tar, who had definitely returned to his native village 
from many trips to foreign shores, that on being asked to 
give his assembled friends some account of the manners 
and customs of a certain savage tribe in one of the rarely 
visited islands of the south Pacific, he shifted his quid to 
the starboard side of his mouth, and, after considerable 
preliminary humming and hawing, gave vent to four 
words : " Manners, none ; customs, nasty." In like fashion 
I propose to tell you — but at somewhat more length — 
about the riders of a land which, in comparison with those 
we have recently visited together, has no riders. 

India is not a land of horsemen. How can you expect 
a man who for sole garb wraps a dirty piece of cotton 
cloth about his loins, wears ear, finger, and toe rings, and 
ties up his long black hair in a Psyche knot, to be a 
horseman? Our American Indian, whose full dress is 
sometimes a paper collar and a pair of cavalry spurs, 
shows at least a natural tendency to equestrianism ; not 
so the pathetic-eyed Hindoo. Practically, over the entire 
extent of the Indian peninsula, the animal which the cow- 
boy picturesquely classifies as a beef -critter is (to speak 
Celtically) the horse of the country. The bullock does 
everything for the Hindoo as the ass does everything for 
the denizen of Egypt or Syria. He is as universal in his 
capacity to help man in his struggle for existence as 
the little burro of Mexico ; and when he is not sacred he 

27 



418 BULLOCKS AND BUFFALOES 

is one of the most useful, as he is always one of the most 
picturesque, creatures in the service of man. 

Our idea of any member of the bovine race is associated 
with clumsiness. We can scarcely imagine even a Jersey 
heifer hitched to a trotting-sulky. But the working bul- 
lock of India is not only quick and handy, but he is a 
rapid walker; and the light-hitch bullock can go a very 
lively gait. He moves as easily as a deer, and is safely 
guided by his nose -ring bridle by throwing the single 
rope-rein over to either side of his hump and giving it a 
pull. I have seen a pair walking four and a half miles an 
hour ; they can trot a seven or an eight mile gait, and 
keep on doing it. They are really attractive animals, 
with their placid, pleasant faces, sleek mouse -colored 
hides, round bodies, and fine limbs ; and the hump, which 
is on all cattle in India — which was there when Alexan- 
der conquered the Punjaub — becomes a rather pleasing 
incident in their outline when you get used to it. They 
bear their yoke well, physically and morally, and are 
equally good at traction and under a pack. The buffalo 
— our buffalo is a bison, you remember — does the heavier 
work, and is somewhat of a slouch, though strong and 
patient. There are donkeys in many parts of India ; but 
the ass is not all things to all men as the bullock is. 
Droves of asses and bullocks mixed (you can hardly tell 
them apart) work very amicably carrying stone, or grain, 
or merchandise of any kind ; and the bhistie, or water- 
carrier, is always a bullock or a buffalo. The small bul- 
lock measures scarcely higher than the ass, and many are 
no bigger than big clogs. A large number have the fine- 
bred look you see in our choice cattle ; but in the south 
they score fancy patterns all over them, much to the detri- 
ment of their looks; and the driver is apt to be a "tail- 
twister," and often permanently injures that appendage. 



THE HINDOO NO RIDER 419 

The bullock has driven out both the horse and the ass 
as a general utility beast, and India is not a land of riders 
mainly because the bullock works better in a cart than 
under saddle, and because three - quarters of the land is 
one vast plain on which roads can readily be kept in good 
condition. There is, of course, a large cavalry force be- 
longing to the Indian army; but to descant on the 
mounted troops of the British forces, wherever they may 
be recruited or serve, is to rehash much of what I have 
heretofore said about other cavalry. The fact that it is 
in India by no means makes it Hindoo cavalry ; it is pat- 
terned on the army system at home. The Sepoys, and 
especially some of the Sikhs, are often extremely inter- 
esting ; but not being to the manner born, they are, in 
riding, gradually growing to the European pattern. In 
fact, everything is. The introduction of cheap tapestry 
Brussels to replace the lovely hand -made rugs of yore, 
and of yet cheaper imported furniture to stand in the 
stead of the soft divan of the last generation, is working 
havoc. Telegraph and railway and steamer are doing 
their inevitable duty ; and when a Parsee merchant offers 
you " a rare old bit of native work," you can almost smell 
Birmingham or Manchester on it. No one denies the 
value of steam transportation or the telegraph ; but they 
do destroy many beauties which the strictly useful cannot 
replace. 

The Hindoo is not much of a rider in the sense of the 
Indian or the Arab, and yet one sees an occasional in- 
teresting specimen in some country districts. In Bombay, 
save a rare mounted policeman, you find none but Euro- 
pean riders, generally on Arabian horses, or some prod- 
uct of Arabian blood. In Calcutta you see more walers 
— as are called the Australian range horses ; and in the 
inland cities, where there are garrisons, the waler is 



420 ARABIANS AND WALERS 

common. Wherever the English go, thither follow polo, 
racing, athletics. Even at Singapore, within forty miles 
of the equator, the irrepressible Briton — may his shadow 
never grow less ! — carries out his regular programme of 
sport, and in India all the games of the mother-country 
are played, and tent-pegging and pig-sticking are in great 
esteem. But this is not Hindoo horsemanship. 

There are many Arabians imported into India across 
to Kurrachee or Bombay. A few reach Madras. A small 
part of the British cavalry is mounted on them, though 
the regulation horse is either the waler — contracted for in 
large numbers and delivered in Calcutta — or the country- 
bred. In Bombay there is an immense sale -stable of 
Arabians, where several hundred are at times collected. 
This horse commands a much better price than I should 
expect. I was asked from three to six hundred rupees — 
one to two hundred dollars at current exchange — for 
only fairish specimens. This is double the price of the 
same horse in Syria. How much it could have been beaten 
down I do not know. It is curious how, from the Ara- 
bian Desert, this nimble little creature radiates in every 
direction, carrying the impress of his blood wherever he 
goes, and improving every native breed with which he 
comes in contact. 

The native Indian horse is not a remarkable creature. 
They run of all sizes and shapes ; but though a few big 
ones come from the Katiwar and Cutchi country, they 
average small and of rather slim structure. They look as 
if little had been done for them for many generations and 
that little only of recent years. I have seen a few in 
the interior which were said to be native horses that ap- 
peared strong and able, but rather ungainly in points. 
If the native horse was available, or could be raised in suf- 
ficient numbers, it is clear that the cavalry would not be 



MANY STYLES 421 

mounted to such an extent on walers, not only because na- 
tive industries are naturally encouraged, but because the 
waler, though he is of decent size and has some endur- 
ance, reaches India always partially, often wholly, un- 
broken, generally goes through a long course of acclima- 
tion, and is not universally liked. By unbroken I do not 
mean that he is as bad as our unbusted bronco, but he 
is bad enough to give a deal of trouble. I have met 
English officers who thought very well of the country- 
bred horses of India, and purchased them for their own 
use. The Arabian, they say, does not have to go 
through an acclimation influenza; he is always gentle 
and well trained. 

Still, Australia has and furnishes good stock. It is the 
English horse taken thither and bred on the ranges. 
Some excellent racers have come from Australia to India 
at half the price their equals would cost in the mother- 
country, and have won much money. 

There is no type of rider in India as there is apt to be 
in other lands. You see in the same province, in the 
same town, a dozen different styles. In Eajputana, for 
instance, the men ride with a somewhat natural seat, but 
many depress their heels in a way to outdo a military 
martinet, while others will thrust their legs way out like 
a Mexican on his muscle. The heels are not so uniformly 
dug into the horse's flanks as among the Arabs, though 
one sees many men whose sole reliance is on a heel grip, 
and who seem to have no idea of what their thighs and 
knees are for. You see as many old condemned army 
saddles as you see native trees, but they are in some places 
hidden by a cotton slip-cover like a country grandmoth- 
er's spare-room chair, in others by a piece of bedquilt tied 
on or strapped into place, so that you cannot see what 
the man is riding as he passes by you. As a rule the bit 



422 BEDQUILTS 

is a simple one — a snaffle or a double ring, sometimes a 
chain bit, but always of European manufacture. One 
rarely sees a gag, and yet more rarely a native-made bit. 
Northern India might well be dubbed the land of bed- 
quilts. What old house -keepers still call " comforters " 
are, in cold weather, never out of your sight. Every na- 
tive, unless he is poor, has one to sleep in — a red, yellow, 
green, or Cashmere pattern, cotton-padded, quilted spread 
— and this serves as his burnoose, bar grace, whenever he 
sallies forth. If he be well-to-do, he has him a long coat 
made of the same stuff, and when he parades up and down 
on a chilly day, he makes you think of a perambulating 
feather-bed, all made up. In Bengal there are not so 
many bedquilts. You see a population apparently better 
off, and many men wear Cashmere shawls in every stage 
of decadence. In lower Bengal the people look well fed. 
You no longer see the canary-bird leg and spare frame ; 
the coolies are fairly rounded up and muscular ; and the 
same remark applies to the Madras Presidency. 




LXVIII 

Let me draw you a picture of a Hindoo rider. Imagine 
this bedquilt individual on horseback. He has a turban of 
Turkey red, marvellously wound in a hundred folds around 
his head, and literally as big as a half -bushel basket ; a 
pea-green comforter is thrown about him, and he wears a 
pair of tight violet cotton trousers on legs without the 
semblance of a calf ; while over his saddle a blue quilted 
padding raises him far above his horse's back. His stir- 
rup-leathers are wound with yellow cotton cloth, and a 
pair of huge crimson shoes finish off his nether members. 
Imagine his dark-brown skin, black piercing eyes, and a 
long mustache and beard stained brick color, and combed 
and Jlxatived in a sidewise and upward curve, the like of 
which one never sees except in a picture of Blue - beard ; 
imagine him sitting a horse with so many and awkward 
ways of going that he cannot be said to have any gait ex- 
cept a walk — a horse naturally of a dirty white, but touched 
up with about a hundred spots of dull red paint all over 
his body and legs, with a tail dyed green, and wearing a 
broad blue bead necklace and a jangling silver chain ; add 
to the man's equipment a small round inlaid shield of 
about the size and defensive value of a tin dish-pan, and a 
twelve-foot reed spear of equal offensive value ; imagine 
all this internecine color carried off with an ingenuous equi- 
poise and air of general and genuine self-satisfaction which 
leads you to suppose that the man owns half the earth, 
and you have a Eajput of distinction. He is really an im- 



424 A RAJPUT RIDER 

pressive spectacle, this rider ; no picture which does not 
give color can yield any distinct impression of him. But 
he is not properly a horseman ; he is a man on horseback 
merely. He can, I dare say, ride in his fashion ; but he 
has no kind of a horse, nor any knowledge which will 
help him teach himself or it. Neither have his ancestors 
had any, and the consequence is plain. Farther north, 
nearer the Himalayas, there are tribes of quasi-horsemen, 
but not in the provinces usually known to tourists as Brit- 
ish India. This rawness in color is, by-the-way, natural 
to the Hindoo. You see it in all the decorations of his 
palaces and his temples. 

I saw a lot of horses in the stable of his Highness the 
Maharajah, at Jeypore. They came, the grooms informed 
me as they unblanketed and named each one, from every 
section of India, from Arabia, Morocco, and Burmah, and 
some from Europe. The majority were native. The sta- 
ble was a long, shed-like structure, on one side of a huge 
quadrangle, massively built of stone, and highly ornate. 
It had no partitions throughout its entire length, but back 
of each horse was an arch some seven feet wide and fifteen 
high, while the mangers were built into the stone-wall op- 
posite. The horses stood on the ground, which was not 
solid and cool, but warm and stamped into dust like very 
fine dry sand, fully three inches deep. The season being 
chilly, each arch was closed in by a straw -woven mat 
hung over it like a curtain. The horses were all blanket- 
ed with an extremely thick wadded cotton blanket, over 
which a second thinner one was thrown and girthed ; and 
each horse, under its fancy halter, had its face and eyes 
entirely covered up by a piece of loose- woven cotton cloth, 
" to prevent his seeing the flies," as the grooms said, and 
I presume to prevent his getting worried and unnecessari- 
ly stamping at them. This practice of blindfolding them 



HOBBLING 425 

in the stall and then taking them out into the glaring 
sun of India seemed to me singularly bad for their eyes. 
I fancy the covering may serve to keep the flies from set- 
tling on the horse's eyes and producing inflammation ; but 
this was not the reason given. 

The thing that would strike you as the oddest was the 
style of hobbling — universal here, and used in whole or in 
part in many Oriental stables. A twenty-foot road ran 
outside the stable, back of the arches. On the farther 
side of this road, opposite each arch, was a stone post, 
around which was fastened two ropes, just long enough to 
run across the road and into the stable to the point where 
the horse's hind-feet would comfortably stand. Each rope 
ended in a flat woven loop, which was passed around the 
horse's fetlock- joint, so that he could neither stamp nor 
kick flies, nor move his hind- legs to change his position, 
nor lie down. His halter ropes were fastened to rings 
in the ground below each end of the manger, say five feet 
apart. He might as well have stood in the stocks. The 
horses were some ten feet from each other. 

They were fed on hay, rather too short and fine to suit 
our notions (the kind which in New England we call good 
cow-hay), dried peas, and a queer-looking, small species of 
oats, all of which were given largely in mashes ; and as a 
consequence the horses were all overfat — as fat as the usu- 
al circus horse that is fed up to ride bareback. Except 
one Arabian and a couple of Burmah ponies, I did not 
see a decent set of legs under a single one of the horses. 
They were all supposed to be saddle-beasts. 

I asked which was the Maharajah's favorite. To my 
surprise I was pointed out an English horse, over seven- 
teen hands high, all but as fat as a London brewer's dray- 
horse, and with very coarse legs, undipped. Unless for 
size, why he should be a favorite it was hard to imagine ; 



426 THE COUNTRY HORSE 

one could perceive no evidence of any saddle quality. In 
the mountains his Highness rides his Burmese ponies. I 
did not see any of the horses led out, and a horse in the 
stall is rather a deceptive thing to look at. They may 
have been better than they appeared. 

The little country horse which you see drawing the na- 
tive springless cart, or used for a pack, or ridden, is usual- 
ly the meanest kind of a runt imaginable, whose ancestry, 
hard- worked, badly fed, and never cared for, has transmit- 
ted to him crooked legs and an ill-shapen body — I am not 
sure that I have ever seen a worse. But he is scarcely in 
our line, for he could by no means be twisted into the 
semblance of a saddle-beast. 



LXIX 

And yet, when you get up into Nepaul, or on the bor- 
ders of Thibet, in the foot-hills of the Himalayas, you find 
a sturdy, round, able pony of eleven or twelve hands, 
stocky, and weighing a good deal for his inches, which 
will carry you at a good walk, a rapid amble, or a strong, 
steady trot. He much resembles the Burmese pony, but 
is supposed to be the same animal as the Hindoo plains 
pony. Whatever his origin, the mountain air seems to 
have given him strength and roundness, as it has to the 
Mongolian men and women who inhabit these hills. As 
a general rule, you may notice that the long-bodied, short- 
legged mammal is produced by the hills, the long-legged 
and smaller- bodied mammal by the plains. It requires, so 
to speak, a good deal of boiler capacity to drive even a 
small engine up the sharp slopes of the hilly country. 
The plains dweller does not need to get up so much steam 
to propel him. The pony ridden by the young King of 
INepaul shows the type. One might call the little fellow, 
as a generic name, the Himalaya pony. 

The woman, by-the-way, is the cooly of the Himalaya 
region. She shoulders, or rather backs, a heavy trunk, 
which she holds by a rope passed under it and over the 
top of her head, and will carry from a hundred to a hun- 
dred and twenty pounds, her own weight almost, for a 
considerable distance. I have heretofore said that the 
Lord never made an animal except the ass which could 
stagger along for a day's work under its own weight ; but 



428 WOMEN AS COOLIES 

I must come close to excepting the Thibetan or Nepaulese 
woman. The children of six or seven begin carrying packs, 
small at first but gradually increased ; by the time a girl 
is twelve or thirteen, she is a full-fledged cooly. She 
works all day for the merest pittance ; carries scone for 
building or wood for burning, bamboo for huts or straw 
for thatch, traveller's packs or railway luggage ; and if 
after years of toil she can save enough to buy a silver 
prayer-box to hang on a string of cornelian and turkis 
beads around her neck, and to fee the priest to write and 
bless a prayer to put in it, she is happy. Nor is this a 
great ambition. Cornelian and turkis are found in every 
hill-side, and silver is. all too cheap. I have been told that 
these little giants — they are rarely more than five feet 
high — can carry a hundred and fifty pounds and upwards. 
I have seen a string of them carrying from eighty to one 
hundred and twenty pounds each. The band over the 
head ends by making a distinct depression in the skull. 
But no matter, the Mongols in this Himalaya region are 
a sturdy and an intelligent race. 

Among them are many different tribes — Lepchas, Nep- 
aulese, Bhooteas, and others ; and farther north the Goor- 
khas, who make the best soldiers the British have found 
in their Indian possessions, not excepting even the Sikhs. 
All these Himalaya races appear to partake of the free- 
dom-loving hardihood and manly courage of mountaineers 
in every part of the world. They are centuries ahead of 
their Mongolian cousins, the Chinese — or is it behind 
them ? The Goorkhas are said to be capital fighters, to 
possess, indeed, the genuine gaudium certaminis, a thing 
the Chinaman most notably lacks. 

Many of the customs of these Himalaya Mongols are 
peculiar, but they are readily understood. I have often 
heard of the Thibetan prayer- wheel, and had imagined it 




KING OP NEPAUI. 



PRAYER-WHEELS 431 

the most mechanical of religious devices. But I find that 
it amounts to no more than a species of rosary. It con- 
sists of a small cylindrical box, perhaps three inches in 
diameter by four long, through the centre of which runs 
a spindle with a wooden handle. A three-inch chain with 
weighted end is fastened to one side of the box, and its 
centrifugal force will keep the box revolving easily on the 
spindle. The owner pays the priest to write him a suit- 
able prayer, which may be for the recovery of one sick, 
for the repose of a deceased relative, or for forgiveness of 
sins. This prayer he puts into the box, and then twirls 
it about, while he recites (pardon misspelling) : " Oo manee 
pay mee hoon I' 1 (O God, hear my prayer !) Wherein this 
is more idolatrous than the fingering of beads, or genu- 
flections, or bowings, or the sign of the cross, or kissing 
relics, or than any mere form of any religion, I fail to 
see. It is a simple means of keeping the simple devotee 
faithful in the performance of a holy duty. The box, by- 
the-way, has usually the words of the ejaculation engraved 
on its margin. 

The Thibetans have perhaps the queerest of all customs 
in disposing of their dead — or, at least, many of the tribes 
have. ]STo doubt the Hindoos, especially in view of their 
hot climate, use the wisest method of burial — to wit, burn- 
ing. The Hindoo body is placed on an ordinary pile of 
wood, and the fire is lighted by a relative with certain 
ceremonies ; the ashes are cast into the nearest river, and 
thrice happy he who is burned on the banks of the holy 
Ganges. The Parsees, on the other hand, consider the 
elements— fire, earth, water — as too sacred to be polluted 
by dead bodies. The} r expose their dead in Towers of Si- 
lence, where the vultures devour them — an operation 
which lasts a bare hour. The Thibetans cut up their dead 
into small pieces, and cast these forth to the birds and 



432 THE LORD'S PRAYER 

beasts, and the richer the deceased the smaller he is cut 
up. This sounds very horrible, but, unless cremation is 
practised, are not all dead given over to some creature to 
feed on? 

And so with nearly all religious customs. They seem 
odd, often what we characterize as heathenish, but they 
are really no worse than many of ours — who should know 
better. The howling dervishes, if properly considered, are 
truly devout worshippers, and make no more noisy dem- 
onstrations than some of our revivalists at home, even 
when they work themselves up to real religious fury in 
their cry of "Allah Hu ! Hu ! Hu!" (Allah, He is God! 
He ! He !) The twirling dervishes are assuredly more 
dignified in their services than many troops of the Salva- 
tion Army ; and, after all, did not David dance before the 
Ark ? Do not all nations sing their praises ? 

In this connection I must tell you of one of the most 
curious cases of misapprehended religious fervor that ever 
came to my notice. Years ago, I was once taxing an old 
negro, deacon oi" a colored church in Washington near 
which I lived, with the fact that his congregation made an 
undue racket in their Sunday evening services. " Meejor," 
said the old man, seriously and respectfully, " doan' you 
know de Lawd's Prayer ?" " Why, of course, Uncle Dan ; 
but what has that got to do with it ?" I queried. " Mee- 
jor," he replied, with evident sorroAV for my apparent ig- 
norance expressed on his good old black face, "doan de 
Lawd's Prayer say ' Hollered be Dy Name V " This col- 
ored brother honestly believed that the second clause of 
our daily invocation was a direct command to praise the 
Lord with loud hosannas, and no doubt so did the entire 
church. I was silenced. There was no time to instruct 
Uncle Dan in the A B C of religion. 

Eeverence is much the same the world over, but it is 






REVERENCE 433 

manifested in different ways. It was, they say, a good old 
Puritan lady of the bluest sect who once remarked that 
she was "going to Boston Wednesday D. V., or Thursday 
whether or noP She meant not to fly in the face of Provi- 
dence, but she was of the trust -in -God and keep -you r- 
powder-dry order. With most of us, by-the-way, D. V. is 
wont to stand for something more in the financial way — 
something akin to Dato Vento — " If I can raise the wind." 
But here I am, trespassing again, and most inexcusably. 



LXX 

While the Hindoo cannot be classed among the riders 
of the world, it would seem that at least once in the 
course of his life he is bound to make his appearance on 
horseback. It is commonly said at home that no man 
fails to get at least one carriage ride while above-ground, 
though it may be on the day of his funeral ; and similarly 
the Hindoo, in many localities, on his marriage day always 
appears on horseback. The bride leads the procession in 
a palanquin. Unlike our brides, she is by far less an object 
of curiosity than the groom ; nor is she dressed so beauti- 
fully or borne in such magnificence. It is a rare circus 
that can turn out so gorgeously caparisoned a beast as the 
horse that bears the groom. His head is crowned with a 
tossing plume ; his face and neck are covered with gold 
brocade from which hang innumerable bright-hued tassels; 
he wears a wide pad - like saddle, over which is thrown 
a gold-brocade blanket which hides his entire rump, and 
hangs down to his hocks ; and from the sides of it depend 
huge clusters of gay tassels as big as cauliflowers. On 
this gaudy creature sits the happy groom, usualty a lad 
under twelve, clad in equally stunning garb, and with his 
face hidden by a veil of gold fringe ; for, though the 
bride on this day may show her face, so may not he. His 
horse is led by two men; while others fan him, still others 
hold long-handled sunshades over his precious head, and 
many attendants surround him. When the contracting 
parties are rich, all this magnificence is real. The kincob, 



FINE EQUIPMENTS 435 

or gold-thread woven cloth, is as expensive as it is beauti- 
ful, and the horse's rig may have cost many thousand 
rupees. When they are poor, it is no less showy, but runs 
fast into the tawdriness which besets all shams and imita- 
tions. 

In the Benares region I saw a number of goodish horses 
very neatly equipped. I took them to be native, with an 
impress of Arabian blood — the latter is always unmistak- 
able — and to belong to Hindoos from the north-west prov- 
inces, who had come down to bathe in the sacred Ganges 
on the ghats of the Holy City. These horses had a fancy 
red or yellow bridle, with a double -ring chain bit, and a 
standing martingale of wide red cotton cloth inserted into 
a loose sort of rope with flowing ends. The saddle was 
stitched in white and red and yellow patterns, with a wide 
padded saddle-cloth of soft woollen goods; and while the 
tree proper may have been of wood, the pommel and 
cantle and seat were made of heavily-padded and quilted 
woollen goods, cleverly fashioned into the guise of a saddle. 
It looked quite soft and easy. Leathers and stirrups were 
of common pattern, but five or six thick party-colored 
ropes passed loosely back over the horse's rump, and were 
gathered at the tail as a sort of ornamental breeching, 
while his mane hung in many braids, which were length- 
ened to three or four feet by jute -cord worked in with 
the hair, and were then looped up to the saddle-bow. 
Altogether, the steed was admirably caparisoned in his 
own barbaric fashion, but the general effect w T as spoiled 
by the hideous bedquilt in which his master ensconced 
himself. The rider was scarcely the peer of the horse. 
When the hotter weather compels him to shed his outer 
integument he must be more picturesque. But nothing 
can equal the grace of the Algerian burnoose. 

Among the military one sees an occasional upstanding 



436 MANIPURI POLO-PONY 

and good-looking horse ; but among the natives of India 
a good horse is so rare that one must set the two hundred 
and fifty millions of this great peninsula down in equine 
matters as far below the rank of other Orientals. The 
little mountain pony is almost the only thing one sees 
which has any attractive points ; the plains horse aver- 
ages low. All those worth having go into the army. 

Polo is much more of a national sport in India than it 
is in Europe. The English adopted it barely thirty years 
ago ; but they have assimilated it, as they do everything 
that savors of athletics. The little Manipuri pony illus- 
trated is a fair specimen of what is used in the native 
sport. The Europeans sometimes import a small Arabian 
for polo ; but the native has to be content with the best 
of the clever ponies of the country. This little specimen 
is not fast; you cannot play a racing game with him; 
but he is nimble and intelligent, and makes good sport. 
The native is an expert. Polo rules vary considerably 
from ours, but the game is pursued with great enthusiasm 
and skill. There may not be so many cracked heads or 
mallet-shy ponies, for the Hindoo character quite lacks the 
brutal side which degrades while it improves all sport; 
but the native game is quite as well worth watching as 
many a game at Hurlingham. 

This little Manipuri is unquestionably allied to the 
Burmah pony. He has the same chunky, short -legged 
skeleton and the weight-carrying power which character- 
izes the Burmese, apart from the fact that his habitat is 
close by. Polo is played in many sections, and this same 
pony is often a favorite with the English. 

Pig-sticking is said by those addicted to the sport to be 
the most splendid one which can be pursued in the saddle. 
I have heard even old fox-hunters give voice to this opin- 
ion. When you are running down a line old boar, and, 



PIG-STICKING 439 

some two or three hundred yards ahead of you, he turns 
and viciously awaits your arrival ; when, by a sudden shy 
or a fluke of your spear, your pony may get ripped up 
and killed, or you may get thrown and end with an ugly 
wound yourself, they say there is enough excitement 
lent to the sport to place it easily at the head of eques- 
trian pleasures. An old boar will often turn and face a 
dozen pursuers, and will charge as furiously as any ani- 
mal on four legs. I regret to say that I have never had 
an opportunity to do any pig-sticking ; though, as I have 
done boar- hunting with dogs in Silesia, I well know the 
value of this distinctly noble beast. I have seen him 
eviscerate half the dogs in a big pack and send the others 
to the right-about in a tussle of less than sixty seconds, 
and then stand his ground until the huntsmen gave him 
the coup-de-grace. 

The sole inducement to raise a good horse in India is 
that he may be sold into the army. There is practically 
no sale for a draught - horse where bullocks do all the 
work. The horses which draw the cabs in the large cities 
are mostly from cast-off army stock, or army "culls." 
The little runts are used in odd bamboo carts for passen- 
ger conveyance all over India ; but by no chance do you 
ever see a good and sizable horse in a native's hands, 
unless he be a rich one or a powerful. Nor can it be said 
that the Indian horse has any special gaits. If he drifts 
into the army he acquires the trot and canter ; all other 
gaits would be taboo. So long as he remains native 
property, he ambles or racks, but in a rather inexpert 
manner. The Indian is not enough of a horseman to cul- 
tivate the gait. Even the donkeys are rarely ridden, and 
as if to imitate their English rulers, under loads they as 
often trot as amble. 



LXXI 

The French have managed to make Algeria a French 
province; it will take the British longer to Anglicize 
India; but their hand lies heavy on the land. Though 
equal before the law, the native " has no rights which a 
w^hite man is bound to respect," and the way in which he 
is repressed is, with due deference to the Briton, more 
worthy of criticism than our much -rebuked Southern 
method of bulldozing the negroes. The Hindoo may do 
nothing of his own free will ; Government takes so father- 
ly an interest in him that he is fenced in at every turn, 
and prevented from doing this, that, or the other. He is 
hustled aside as our negro cannot be, and there is a sort 
of moral Post no Bills on every street corner. It reminds 
one of the celebrated witticism of the Louis XIV. era, 
w T hen there w T as a " Defense " to do something on every 
hoarding, and a multitude had assembled at a new mira- 
cle-working shrine in numbers which threatened to be- 
come a nuisance. Some one posted up during the night 
near the spot a placard reading : 

"De Par Le Roy, Defense a Dieu 
De Faire Miracles En ce Lieu." 

Our good cousins have a sad trick of berating us be- 
cause the few millions of negroes in America are not ad- 
mitted by the whites to social equality ; and they allege 
that we have done nothing to raise the negro since his 
emancipation. But, with their usual obtuseness, they for- 



MOTES AND BEAMS 441 

get that here is nearly a fifth part of the population of the 
world under their care, who are held down and despised 
far worse than our black man and brother. And yet the 
Hindoo is an Aryan cousin. What a mote and what a 
beam ! 

The Hindoo is free enough in theory, but he is kept 
down in a markedly high-hancled way. The Southerner 
really takes an interest in the negro. It pays to do it. 
Not so the Briton in the Hindoo. And while in a certain 
sense the latter has intelligence and some artistic qualities 
beyond the American negro, his religion will prevent his 
rising as the negro is eventually bound to do. It cannot 
be said, indeed, that the Briton does much of anything to 
raise the race. Of course he improves the land. He 
builds water- w r orks and railways and telegraphs. He is 
just and liberal. All this reacts in a general way on the 
people. India is distinctly mending her ways. But in 
the matter of personal intercourse with the native, he 
is far more of a sinner than the worst of the Southern 
brigadiers. 

In order to provide work for the immense population 
at a mere living wage, labor of all kinds is subdivided in 
a manner we cannot understand. You hire your "bearer" 
or travelling servant, a very intelligent sort of man, for a 
rupee and a half (forty-five cents) a day, and he boards 
himself. A friend of mine in Madras keeps thirty-six 
servants to do the work which my six at home do quite 
as well. One man will sweep out the rooms, but will not 
dust them ; another will bring you fresh water, but his 
caste forbids him to throw out the slops ; a third will per- 
form the most menial work, but wall not touch a plate 
which a Christian has eaten off. Each horse my friend 
keeps must have a syce and a grass-cutter, usually the syce's 
wife ; and he needs a coachman for every two carriages 



442 CHEAP LABOR 

besides. And yet all these servants cost but about the 
wages of my six, and they all of them lodge and board 
and clothe themselves, which mine do not. 

Labor in India is extraordinarily cheap. You hire a 
servant to wait on you in a hotel for four annas (eight 
cents) a day, and have no care as to his keep or shelter. 
But the cumulative labor in the country is sometimes 
absurdly dear. On leaving the Great Eastern Hotel to go 
to the P. & O. steamer last spring, I had two small trunks 
and two smaller hold- alls. At home one porter would 
have shouldered a trunk and carried a hold-all; in two 
trips he would have loaded them on a cab, and would 
have been well paid with ten or fifteen cents ; in England 
or France with less. But a "bearer" — lucus a non — 
never bears anything except abuse. There followed him 
into my room no less than seven coolies. Two hoisted a 
trunk on their heads and marched off quadruped fashion ; 
two others did the like with the other trunk ; the fifth 
and sixth took each a hold-all on his head ; the seventh 
carried my umbrella, and the bearer looked on. Down we 
tramped, nine in all of us ; the four things were loaded on 
a two-bullock cart with two drivers, and I was put in a 
cab with a driver and a syce. Thirteen full-grown men 
thus escorted the four bundles, or, to express it in more 
correct terms, it took a dozen men, two bullocks, one 
horse, and two vehicles to see me and my four small bits 
of luggage to the boat. Total disbursement, exclusive of 
the cab, one rupee and ten annas, or just about fifty cents. 
I was ruined by Hindoo cheap labor, but I could not go 
for the heathen Hindoo on account of his plurality, let 
alone custom. 

The two coolies carrying a trunk on their heads re- 
minds me of a wonderful answer once given in court by 
old Harvey Waters, the mechanical expert. It was the 




HARVEY WATERS 443 

case of Koss Winans, who had got a patent on a truck- 
ear — i.e., a passenger-car mounted on two trucks, instead 
of having the axles running in boxes fixed to the car, as 
is still the habit in all Europe. The truck-car will run on 
a shorter curve and on a rougher road-bed, and Ross Wi- 
nans thought that he held the entire railway system of 
the States in the hollow of his hand. The patent was 
attacked, and Harvey Waters was expert for Winans. 
Mr. William Whiting was counsel for the party opposing 
the patent, and had shown that it had been usual to 
transport long pieces of merchandise or tree -trunks or 
lumber on two small four-wheeled cars, to which each 
end of the long thing would be lashed. He sought to 
make Mr. Waters acknowledge that a passenger-car on 
two trucks was the same thing as a big log lashed on two 
small cars ; but could not do so. After a very long cross- 
examination, in which Waters's clear method of statement 
quite baffled the lawyer's acumen, Mr. Whiting said : 
" Will you please tell the court, Mr. Waters, wherein re- 
sides the difference between a log lashed to two four- 
wheeled cars and a passenger-car riding on two trucks?" 
Old Waters thought an instant, and then looking up with 
his glistening black eyes, and running his fingers through 
his snow-white hair, answered, " Mr. Whiting, a log lashed 
to two trucks is no more a passenger-car riding on two 
trucks than two men carrying a log between them on 
their shoulders are a quadruped !" This astonishingly 
keen reply told the story better — made the case clearer — 
than a whole day of legal refinements had been able to 
do. Harvey Waters was as wonderful as his scythe-roll- 
ing machine. 

Among the very best of the Eastern populations which 
now owe fealty to Great Britain are the Burmese. They 
are very much like their native ponies, small, but muscu- 



444 THE BURMESE 

lar and stocky, with excellent endurance and the very 
best of manners. The Burmese are Mongols, but even 
in Lower Burmah the healthful influence of their orig- 
inal uplands in the Himalayas is clearly to be traced. 
The men are strong, and many of the women are pretty ; 
they are quite another race from their Hindoo neighbors. 
Why they did not ages ago conquer the entire Indian 
peninsula it is hard to say, unless they prefer their own 
rugged hills. The Burmah pony has all the character- 
istics of the Burmah man ; and he is said often to pos- 
sess road-speed, probably not, however, in our sense. He 
finds his way all over India under the pseudonym of 
Pegu pony. 

The aspect of Southern differs materially from that of 
Northern India. The soft, moist, tropical heat keeps the 
native's pores open and seems to make him a cleaner mor- 
tal. He strikes one as better fed — it is an ambition here 
to grow fat; his huts are neater, and altogether he fills 
your ideas of decency to a greater degree. By decency I 
do not refer to clothes. If the bathing-suit of a modern 
belle can go in a bonbon box, so will the full dress of a 
Hindoo go in a thimble. A string around his waist, with 
a breech-cloth scarcely as big as a handkerchief tied to it 
front and rear, is all he needs. He wears no turban ex- 
cept in the extreme summer heat, and goes about looking 
for all the world like an old black -bronze statue. The 
children remain as the Lord made them. The women are 
always scrupulously clad, if diaphanously. But though 
the Hindoo sometimes rides a bullock, he is rarely enough 
astride a horse. His little native jutka pony is barely 
worth notice ; he is not half as good a goer as the trotting 
bullock. 

In Madras the waler is omnipresent. He is fair for 
carriage work, not more. A pair of good -going sixteen- 




PRICE OF WALERS 445 

hand walers command twelve hundred rupees ; a good- 
looking, well-trained saddle-beast, a thousand. 

As we leave the land of the Brahman, we feel that it is 
the least of a land of riders of any we have seen. The 
Hindoo cannot be called a horseman. 



LXXII 

When, in coming from India, you reach the land of the 
Mongol, you are first of all struck by the sturdiness of the 
people. The Malay Peninsula shows you a population of 
athletes. Nowhere outside of Japan have I seen such a 
collection of muscular legs ; the 'ricksha men have an 
abnormal underpinning, and the naked-torsoed coolies are 
a pleasure to behold, though perhaps they lack the thor- 
ough-bred type which you find in our own men in training, 
with its exceptional depth of lung-space. It is fortunate 
for Europe that the Turanian race is conservative in- 
stead of enterprising. If, with its numbers and physique 
and habits of obedience, it had the colonizing spirit and 
good leadership, it would sweep over Europe like an ava- 
lanche. But it is scarcely possible that a people w T hich 
for so many thousand years has been content to starve at 
home will seek an outlet across the tremendous mountain 
barriers of Central Asia. 

The bullock as the horse of the country disappears after 
you round the Malay Peninsula, and we are greeted by 
the same little pony which has excited our admiration in 
the Himalayas, and in Burmah and Pegu. When you 
reach Cochin China, or Annam, or Tonquin (I am not 
enough of a geographer or a politician to tell where one 
ends and the other begins, for in territorial divisions na- 
tions seem nowadays to be playing at hide-and-seek all 
over the world), you run across a race of men which needs 
no beast of burden. Indeed, they have not the where- 



THE HIMALAYA PONY 447 

withal to feed it. These Mongols are essentially foot- 
men; the coolies are the sumpter-animals ; they have nei- 
ther bullock nor horse nor ass for labor ; man does all the 
work ; the horse is a mere luxury. The population of the 
plains is so dense that there is food only for man. But in 
the high lands the little Himalaya pony may be found ; 
he has wandered along the water- shed and spurs of the 
" backbone of the earth " to Siam and beyond, and has 
lost none of his sterling qualities. 

He is indeed a wonderful little creature, this Himalaya 
pony. I do not know how otherwise to name him ; but 
whether he be called the Burmah, or the Pegu, or the 
An nam pony, he is in race as markedly the same as the 
Barb of the Libyan is the cousin of the Arabian of the 
Syrian desert. He varies in size. In Burmah he is often 
nearly fourteen hands ; in Cochin China he is barely twelve. 
He is amiable and intelligent, has the same solid qualities 
which all pony races seem to inherit, and, for his inches, 
will carry or drag a wonderful weight. A man of over 
two hundred pounds will ride a little eleven -hands pony 
all day; a rat of less size will draw a cab with four passen- 
gers inside and two men on the shafts. There is no S. P. 
C. A. in the Far East. 

As it decreases in size all horse-flesh gains immensely in 
proportionate ability to labor. The same rule applies, in 
fact, to all creatures. The flea can jump a hundred times 
his own height or length ; imagine an elephant lightly 
hopping from the Champ de Mars to the top of the Tour 
Eiffel and back again ! The same ratio does not hold in 
mammals ; but the pony can certainly do twice the work 
of the cart-horse in proportion to his avoirdupois, and this 
is the case with every race of ponies. Some hybrid ani- 
mals (such as the Spanish jennet) lack this peculiar quali- 
ty ; but the rule is sound. 



448 SAIGON RACES 

I attended some races in Saigon, the French town of 
Cochin China. They struck me as rather funny, for all 
the entries were these same little rats, and the time made 
was slow enough ; but the plucky ponies proved clearly 
that they had endurance, and speed according to their 
kind. There were, among other events, trotting races in 
harness and under saddle ; and, providing the horse went 
anything but a gallop, it was looked on as within the law. 
In one saddle-race, with only two entries, one pony paced 
and the other single-footed. The latter was a phenom- 
enal little beast, and won the trotting -race in as fine a 
three-minute rack as you ever saw, with the side-wheeler 
at his tail. The whole thing was as interesting as it was 
ludicrous. 

Practically, no one rides in these Mongolian countries. 
Only a stray mandarin who wants to put on an extra bit 
of dignity uses a saddle-beast, and then he does not ride ; 
he occupies, as it were, a box-seat on the four-footed con- 
veyance — a phrase, by-the-way, which recalls the lady who 
is said to have gone out riding on her pet trained tiger, 
and on the return -trip to have occupied an inside seat. 
The mandarin has rarely a well-caparisoned mount. He 
himself is as gaudy as the birds of his native land, but his 
knees wobble to and fro and his toes point in every direc- 
tion in and out of season. He does not ride, he gets trans- 
ported by the horse. 

The French officers serving with the army of Tonquin 
and its dependencies ride the Himalaya pony; and all the 
beasts they use in the artillery and trains are of this race ; 
but the native uses him little. No other horse can take 
his place. The Government buys ponies at about thirty 
Mexican dollars ($20 of our money) a head ; an officer 
pays forty to sixty for a good one ; and the universal testi- 
mony is that he is unexcelled. 



FAILURE OF ARABIANS 449 

Curiously, the Arabian, who thrives in every other part 
of the world, has' failed here. The French have essayed 
to acclimate him, but he has proven useless. The speci- 
mens brought over from Algeria, at a cost of over a hun- 
dred and fifty dollars each, went to pieces before they had 
rendered any service; and some officers who bought them 
for ten or twenty dollars at the Government sale, and tried 
to get this value out of them, practically had their trouble 
for their pains. 

This pony needs little care in any weather or under any 
exposure. He is as surefooted as a Bad Lands bronco, a 
rather exceptionally good roadster, and hard to kill. He 
has lots of grit, and you can put him right along without 
fear of injury. He is not a small horse like the bronco : 
he is a pony with the real pony head, body, and legs ; but 
he has a well-rounded crest, and carries a rather better 
than average tail. AVhen this is squared, and his mane 
hogged, he is as neat- turned a little fellow as you may 
want to see. Few except whole horses are used. 



LXXIII 

The Celestial is less of a horseman than even the Hin- 
doo. There are scarce a dozen public horses in Hong- 
Kong ; in Canton there is not one kept for public use, for 
there are no streets wide enough for him to travel on. 
In Shanghai there are a few cabs to supplement the 'rick- 
shas and the queer passenger-wheelbarrow on which the 
Chinese take their outings or pay their social duties ; but 
the only riders one sees in any part of China are military 
men, or residents, who ride d I 'Anglaise. 

Riders may be said to be habitual or accidental. So 
soon as you leave Arabia to the west of you, the latter 
condition obtains. In the far East no one who must not 
ever thinks of riding, unless he be a European stranded 
away from home by official duty or by commerce. One 
cannot wonder that, with this lack of appreciation of his 
good qualities, the Chinese pony has become a wretched 
specimen. On the whole, I do not know anywhere, but 
in Japan, a horse which shows so poorly. He is coarse 
in every sense. Even when clipped he still looks coarse. 
A large percentage are white or of light color, and they 
all resemble each other like eggs in a basket. This pony 
averages little over fourteen hands, if that. His head is 
large and meaty, though exhibiting in the face no signs of 
vice. His neck is put on so that he cannot by any possi- 
bility carry a good head ; and as at all gaits and in all 
positions it sticks out in linear prolongation of his back- 
bone, so he has no throttle, and his head is affixed to his 




CHINESE PONY 451 

neck as the head of a hammer is fixed on its handle. His 
body is clumsy, and his hair rough. The mane is thick, 
and the long, bushy tail is curly and carried close. His 
legs show neither bone nor sinew, and his feet look flat, 
though I have seen few lame ones. He is ungainly to a 
degree, and far removed from the Burmah pattern, which, 
while partaking of all the points that ponies exhibit all 
over the world, is neat turned, and boasts a good crest 
and well-carried tail. The fact is that the Himalaya pony 
will not wander far from his hills and retain his identity. 
The same thing has happened in China that has happened 
in India, but in a greater degree ; and in neither case has 
man tried to breed for a good stock. 

The Chinese pony may have endurance ; but no animal 
so meanly constructed by Nature can possess the grit of 
the finer-made creature. Blood will tell. Not but what 
he will respond to good treatment. Some foreign resi- 
dents manage to improve his looks, and, no doubt, to a 
certain degree, his qualities. But whenever you see a 
good one he is apt to be an imported pony. 

I have met Europeans who speak well of the Chinese 
pony. The best specimens come from Mongolia, where, 
they say, a few Arabians which were brought to China 
by the English army in the fifties eventually turned up 
and gave a good impress to the native stock. This state- 
ment does not accord with the French experience in Ton- 
quin, nor does the Arabian blood show here in the remot- 
est degree— though it invariably does elsewhere, at once 
and permanently. 

The Chinese pony is brought in herds to Hong-Kong 
and Shanghai from Mongolia, and is sold for from ten to 
fifty Mexican dollars. A good one can be got for sixty, 
and from that upwards. Why, en passant, can Mexico 
manage to palm off her dollars on the entire distant East, 



452 A MOUNTED MANDARIN 

while our handsome trade-dollar cannot be forced on the 
people ? The pony arrives half broken, but he may be 
trained to fair utility, and many people make a decent 
hack of him. Some say he can jump, but this cannot be 
what we mean by jumping. At his best he is far below 
his Himalaya cousin. His appearance proves it. Some 
individuals, without points, may turn out to be good ; but 
I never knew a race of horses without points — or of men 
either — who were worth their salt. 

Nothing but necessity, or the desire to cut a figure — an 
incentive, by the way, of the most potent among all hu- 
man beings — can possibly get a Chinaman astride a pony. 
I am not referring to the Tartars ; they are another folk. 
But John Chinaman, as we know him, the inhabitant of 
the region to which Hong - Kong and Shanghai serve as 
outlets, the pidgeon-English, "chin-chin" Mongol, is no 
horseman. There are race -tracks in both these great 
ports, but the sport is sustained by the foreign popula- 
tion, not by the Chinese. You may see a Chinaman ex- 
ercising his master's horse, and clad in the garb of the 
British groom; but he is the exception, and acquires 
horsemanship in an imitative fashion. 

The Mandarin on horseback is a sight for gods and 
men. He is pompous enough in his element ; but astride 
a horse his dignity may be expressed by a minus quan- 
tity. To us this is very evident ; but to the never-riding 
Chinaman no doubt the mounted Mandarin gains in im- 
portance as he gains in height. He objects to being shot 
at by a kodak, does the Mandarin, and still more to being 
deliberately posed by the man with the tripod apparatus ; 
but he makes an interesting picture. His inverted wash- 
bowl hat of scarlet silk has a rich black fringe loosely 
flowing upon it, while a peacock feather sticks out from 
it like a rudder to the rear. His inner gown of bright 




A MANDARIN'S RIDING EQUIPMENTS 



453 



yellow brocade, as he sits in the saddle, hangs like the 
very best pattern of the divided skirt so vainly longed 
for b}^ our fair equestriennes. Over this goes a loose but 
stiff silk shirt -like garment of more modest hue, which 
hangs down only to the pony's back, and his cork-soled 
shoes are thrust into gilt stirrups, with his knees much 
bent but his lower leg nearly perpendicular. If he goes 







■ <** 




CHINESE MANDAKIN 



out of a walk, however, he will cling with all the legs and 
heels he can command. His omnipresent fan he has mo- 
mentarily exchanged for a lash- whip, and his general air 
of uneasiness is in keeping with the ill-kempt condition of 
his pony, who seems utterly indifferent as to whether he 
bears a Mandarin or a cooly. Barring a necklace of big 
beads, or sometimes sleigh-bells, and a thick saddle-cloth 
of gaudy color, the pony is meanly equipped ; and he is 



454 THE ABACUS 

uniformly led by an attendant, though why, it is hard to 
see. An umbrella - bearer and other servants surround 
the Mandarin, lest the many -headed should press too close- 
ly upon his Immaculate Transparency. Thus mounted 
and equipped he goes to and from the Joss-house — the 
cynosure of neighboring eyes, and in his own the mirror 
of purity. 

The Chinaman is a very able mortal, in his way. It is 
astonishing what excellent and reliable work he can do 
at the rate of twenty -five cents a day for skilled labor. 
He will copy you a coat, a clock, a steamer ; he will 
stall-feed and cook you a rat that you shall roll for as 
sweet a morsel under your tongue as a gray squirrel ; or 
he will prepare you a puppy that shall serve you for a 
sucking-pig. He touches nothing that he does not adorn, 
from philosophic thinking to cheating at cards. Confu- 
cius was a Chinaman ; so was Ah Sin. He has his limi- 
tations, to be sure. His coat may rip ; his clock may not 
keep time ; his steamer may not go. He rarely perfects 
anything ; " will pass " is his motto. It costs him an 
effort to get to the true inwardness of things. Take the 
case of the abacus. You buy three articles at ten cents 
each ; the Chinese shopkeeper cannot tell you that the 
sum is thirty cents (in America it would be " three for a 
quarter," I suppose), but he goes at his abacus, and after 
rattling away a few seconds, exclaims " Dirty cent !" with 
a smile of triumph. I went one day into the splendid 
building of the Hong-Kong and Shanghai Banking Cor- 
poration, capital ever so many millions, to get some notes 
changed — $440 at 1% discount. One must assume that 
the employes of this concern are men of the highest abil- 
ity in their line ; but my particular clerk, though a man 
of fifty and evidently in authority, could not tell me that 
he must deduct $4.40 for the ltf, and give me back 



BROUGHAM AND WALLACE 455 

$435.60 ; he had to fiddle away for ten or twelve seconds 
at the abacus. In the brocade-shop of Laon-Kai-Fook & 
Co. I bought 3 J yards of goods at $1.60 a yard. It was 
easy for me to say $5.20 at once, and I laid that amount 
on the counter ; but the clerk doubtfully shook his head, 
and going at the abacus, in a short while evolved the same 
sum total. Yet he will do intricate sums in interest and 
discount as readily as he does the 3 + 10. The abacus 
spoils his mental arithmetic as many books destroy the 
memory ; but it averages well. 

Now, the moral of all this is that the Chinaman rides 
his horse much as he does his figuring — not by under- 
standing the animal and the work to be done, but by the 
use of a sort of equine abacus. If the pony shies, he has 
to rattle out the best thing to do by a mechanical process, 
or get " rattled " himself. His intuitions, his horse-sense 
are nil. What wonder he is no rider ! 

Which last phrase reminds me of the old story that 
John Brougham is said to have once told on Lester Wal- 
lack, in payment for some practical joke by the latter. 
It was at an actors' dinner, and in his after-dinner speech 
Brougham said that he had lately had a dream. " I had 
died," said he, " and was laboriously plodding up towards 
the gates of Paradise, foot-sore and weary, along the dusty 
highway, with a lot of other pilgrims, all manifestly from 
among the lowly in station, when I heard the sound of 
wheels behind me and the blare of a horn ; and, turning, 
I saw coining towards me a fine crimson coach and four 
spanking bays, the leaders cantering and the wheelers on 
a strong, square trot, as stylish as you please. Stepping 
aside, to my surprise I perceived Lester Wallack on the 
box, tooling the team in a masterly manner ; and as he 
passed, heedless of my shout of recognition, flicking a fly 
from his off-leaders nigh ear with the nonchalance of an 



456 THE CHINESE RELIABLE 

artist of the first water. I watched them as they bowled 
along at a fifteen -mile gait, fancying it too bad that I 
should thus be left behind by one of my old friends and 
one of my own ilk ; and, mirabile dictu, as they heared 
the outer portals, these were swung wide open as a wel- 
come, and the coach-and-four rumbled in. Some hour or 
so later I reached the gates and humbly knocked at the 
small side -wicket. After a while a sort of little ticket- 
window was cautiously opened and St. Peter put out his 
head. ' Who's there V ' It is I, St. Peter, John Brougham,' 
I replied, with fear and trembling. ' Where from V ' New 
York.' ' H'm — profession V ' Actor.' ' Oh, don't come 
bothering here !' said the saint, testily, rattling his keys ; 
w first turn to the left, broad road, downhill ; we've no 
room in this place for theatre - folks,' and was about to 
slam the window in my face, when I hastily exclaimed, 
w But, good St. Peter, I just saw Lester Wallack drive 
through the beautiful big gates in gorgeous style.' ' Les- 
ter Wallack, did you say V mused St. Peter — ' Lester Wal- 
lack % Why, he's no actor !' " 

This story may be like a jewel of gold in a — well, mis- 
placed ; but 'tis a good story. 

It is due to the Chinese merchant to say that, even if 
he has no horse-sense, he is business-like and reliable. 'No 
Chinaman's note ever goes to protest at the banks ; and 
the man who handles the cash all over the far East, even 
in Japan, invariably wears a pigtail. 



LXXIY 

The every-day Japanese pony is a buffoon, the clown 
of the equine circus. His character seems to come from 
a lack of appreciation of what a horse is fit for on the 
part of this amiable people. When you see a rider dis- 
mount at a hill, walk up himself and push his horse, stop- 
ping to rub the sweat off his nag's face at intervals ; or 
when you see him perform half his journey afoot on a hot 
day, walking along beside and fanning his horse mean- 
while, you may indeed conceive a high opinion of the 
man's sweet reasonableness, but you do not gain in re- 
spect for the brute as a saddle-beast. Wouldn't a cowboy 
grin at such an exhibition? ]STo wonder the pony is a 
perfect Jack-pudding. 

His appearance corresponds with his character. Per- 
haps there is no animal which more distinctly belies the 
noble qualities of the race. If the Chinese pony lacks 
good points, the common run of the Japanese may be said 
to have none at all. Generally of a dirty brown color, 
this horse has a shock of coarse mane about his neck and 
ears and face which would do honor to a Dandie Dinmont 
terrier. Since the Japanese themselves have began to 
adopt European customs, they have given up the pictu- 
resque paint-brush queue, which used to be brought from 
behind up over the head and pointed at you like the barrel 
of a Smith & Wesson, and now get their polls cropped 
about twice a year. After some six months' growth, the 
thick raven hair with wmich the Jap is blessed stands up 



458 JAPANESE PONIES 

like nothing in the world so much as a coarse black 
clothes-brush ; and the Japanese pony's head is an exag- 
geration of his master's. Old pictures show that this has 
always been so. The shaggy mane and forelock is not like 
that of a good pony ; it is not only unkempt, but scarcely 
possible to comb ; it exhibits the lowest form of breeding, 
and the rest of his appearance corresponds. He is, how- 
ever, much larger and apparently stronger than the Chi- 
nese pony. 

There is no typical Japanese rider at the present day. 
The daimio of old has gone into the army, and rides ac- 
cording to the modern dispensation; the samurai have 
degenerated into policemen. They are out of our cat- 
egory. Polo may be said no longer to exist. The fact 
that there is a Polo Club — an aristocratic survival of Old 
Japan — and that a formal game is now and then played — 
much as we hold a Forefathers' Ball — merely serves to 
prove the rule. I have said above that the Japanese ex- 
ceed all other players in skill at polo. This is true ; but I 
must limit the statement to that part of the game which 
consists of handling the ball. In the part which covers 
horsemanship they are far behind. 

You may not remember the fact that Japanese polo, 
which has been played since the seventh century, is a fine 
game of skill rather than a hammering athletic sport. 
The polo mallet is really a sort of small racket with a 
long bamboo handle, and with the net loose enough to en- 
able the player to catch up and by a circular motion of 
the wrist retain the ball. It weighs under two ounces, 
and the ball under one. Fourteen players range them- 
selves in two files down each side of the long enclosure. 
Goal is a fence at the farther end of the ground, in which 
is a round hole eighteen inches in diameter, holding a net 
pocket ; and the object of each player is to put the balls 



THE DAIMIO 459 

of his side, with which he starts and is kept provided, into 
goal, and to prevent his opponents from so doing with 
their own. A barrier keeps the players from coming 
within eighteen feet of goal. Seven balls goaled on either 
side finishes the first stage of the game, when one ball 
alone, for the side having so scored, is kept on the field. 
If this side can also goal this last ball, it wins. Games 
lasting over half an hour are drawn. The game is very 
full of nicety, but lacks the vigor of ours. 

In olden times — and olden times in Japan date only 
back of 1855, when Commodore Perry so lustily knocked 
at her doors — there was a rider in this land of the rising 
sun. Tradition and art combine to prove his existence. 
He may have been a daimio or baron ; he may have be- 
longed to the samurai or gentry, which was also the war- 
rior class. As every one who has ever seen a Japanese 
picture-book will remember, this rider is generally repre- 
sented by the old artists in a peculiarly fierce attitude, and 
with an expression which the vulgar imagine to be evoked 
by the determination to conquer some mighty enemy, to 
slay some grewsome dragon, or to face some gibbering, 
squeaking ghost, the most fiendish of all Japanese fiends ; 
but to my horseman's eye the expression clearly denotes 
a determination to stick to the saddle for the next half- 
hour or perish in the attempt. The act of riding appears 
to have been more terrible to the ancient Japanese war- 
rior than the enemy. If the daimio rode as he is depicted 
as riding, he was not even a man on horseback ; he was a 
man who might stay on horseback or might not. Like 
John Leech's Frenchman describing his experiences in the 
hunting-field, he might explain : " Yen she joamp easy, I 
am ; mats ven she joamp so 'ar-r-rd, I do not r-r-remain." 

But he had a noteworthy saddle, this daimio — a saddle 
of gold lacquer. This may not sound very wonderful, 



460 GOLD LACQUER 

but do you know what gold lacquer is ? You pick up a 
little shiny yellow box as light as a feather at a curio- 
dealer's, a box which to your inexperienced eye looks 
worth fifty cents, and ask its price. " One hundred dol- 
lars," conies the answer. You think the man is joking, 
and offer him five, and keep on increasing up to fifty, six- 
ty, perhaps eighty, and still you will not get that box. 
There is many a gold-lacquer box too small to hold even a 
few quires of note-paper, and without any fictitious archae- 
ological value, which a thousand-dollar bill will not pur- 
chase ; and I recently saw, in that wonderful curio-store 
of Ikeda's in Kyoto, eight thousand dollars offered and 
refused for a not very large cabinet. The offer came from 
a well-known English nobleman. Until you know the 
labor which goes into it, and its durability, and acquire 
the taste for its refined beauty, you have no idea of what 
gold lacquer can be. It is the most indestructible prod- 
uct of human skill. Though made solely by repeated coat- 
ings of an ill-smelling sort of varnish on a wood frame, a 
needle will not scratch it nor a live coal burn it. Some 
lacquer sent by the Mikado to the Vienna Exposition 
went down off the coast on its return home, and lay eigh- 
teen months in the sea -water before it was fished up. 
When opened, though its coverings had been at once 
soaked through, and though the metal hinges were deeply 
corroded, the gold lacquer was found to be as perfect as 
the day it had been finished — two hundred years ago. 
His lacquer is somewhat of an index to the character of a 
Japanese. Both contain much honest gold. 

Now, though the daimio may have been less of a rider 
than the Indian in his home-made elkhorn tree, he often 
sat in a gold-lacquer saddle, which represented the work 
of a score of men for a decade, and very beautiful it was. 
Its construction was odd. The pommel was like an enor- 



JAPANESE ART 461 

mous two-pronged fork with short tines much spread ; the 
cantle was the same, but somewhat wider, and with tines 
more spread. These were held together by two side- 
pieces placed against them end on, and lashed to them by 
gay silk cords passed through holes perforated in each, 
and with dangling tassels. The saddle was never a firm, 
solid whole ; the parts were illy held to each other, and 
nothing but a mass of blankets saved the horse from a con- 
stant sore back. The daimio sat as loosely in the saddle 
as it sat loosely on the horse, and rode with a more than 
Oriental seat, leaning forward over the withers and perched 
away above the horse, much as I can remember the effigy 
of Akbar, the Great Mogul, at Madame Tussaud's "Wax 
Works. His feet were thrust into the biggest metal stir- 
rups which, I think, have ever existed, and which weigh 
six to ten pounds apiece. They are made like a huge pair 
of slippers without heels or counters, and with the sides 
cut out, while the heavy silk cord which served in lieu of 
leathers passed through an eye at the instep. These stir- 
rups can often be bought at the curio-stores. They are 
generally of iron, ornamented with fine damascene work 
of gold and silver. To us less artistic people it seems 
queer to decorate with precious metals so common a ma- 
terial as iron ; but the Japanese thinks only of the effect, 
using all metals indifferently to work out his scheme ; and 
iron lends itself wonderfully well to decoration. The dai- 
mio' s bit was a queer affair, a cross between a curb and a 
double-ring snaffle, and was hung in a simple bridle of silk 
cord. His bridle-reins were often tied to his sash on either 
side of him — a fact which perhaps argues more for his 
ability to guide his pony than I have above admitted. 
The pony was shod with straw sandals or not at all. The 
daimio wore a dress of marvellous goods, with his crest 
between the shoulder-blades, and embroidered all over 



462 STRENGTH OF JAPANESE 

with flowers and storks and dragons, and ample enough 
to cover half his horse as well as to hide his own person. 
He was a gay bird, indeed, but nothing in the old pictures, 
or in the modern horse, shows him to have been much of 
a rider. 

The modern Japanese horse is properly a beast of bur- 
den ; so is the bullock ; so are the men and women. But 
there are few horses and fewer bullocks, while men and 
women are plenty. It seems to me that the Japanese 
works harder than any other peasant in the world. The 
loads he drags on his long two -wheeled cart are enor- 
mous ; the speed and endurance of the jinricksha cooly 
surpass those of any other. He is built for hard work. 
With an extra big body in proportion to his small stature, 
he has legs which are wonderful for their muscular devel- 
opment ; and he seems to be able to keep at his work 
without distress. The 'ricksha man neither sweats nor 
puffs, even after a long pull. A set of tandems took my 
party sixteen long miles one morning in two hours and 
twenty minutes, over a rise of four hundred feet ; they 
went the last three miles downhill at a full run, apparent- 
ly for the fun of it ; and when they pulled up not one of 
the eight men was even breathing hard. The home trip 
was at an equally lively pace. The demand has called out 
a supply of runners. There is no need of a light draught- 
horse in Japan. 

The Japanese is essentially a strong man of his inches, 
and has endurance unspoiled by bad national habits. The 
athletes are very able ; but until I saw them, I never 
could explain to myself how men who eat and drink 
themselves into mountains of fat could retain their pow- 
ers of wrestling. On seeing the imperial champion, a 
man of perhaps five feet seven — this is tall for a Jap, 
whose average height is little over five feet — and weigh- 




WRESTLERS 463 

ing, I should judge, at least two hundred and fifty pounds, 
with fat, indeed, hanging down in big loops over his belt, 
I exclaimed that it was not possible for such a man to 
wrestle. And I was right ; according to our rules he 
could not wrestle at all. But Japanese matches require 
far less endurance than our own long collar -and -elbow 
matches, or than any style admissible among us. A Jap- 
anese bout lasts often but five or ten seconds ; rarely a 
hundred; and bouts are never more than best two in 
three. The idea of rules which will keep a man at work 
for two hours or more has not occurred to them. So 
many things end a bout that the fat man runs no chance 
of getting winded ; he scarcely has to use his lungs. The 
ring is not much over a dozen feet in diameter, and if he 
can force his lighter opponent out of it, or throw him in 
any manner whatever, or force him on one knee, he wins. 
A fall in Japan means any fall ; a man need not be put 
flat on his back. The fat man himself is hard to move ; 
you cannot get a hold on his slippery, bulky corporosity ; 
so long as he has to make no running fight which will ex- 
haust him, he is master of the situation. But in a match 
that called on him for lung power he would be nowhere, 
despite his mere strength and weight. A lively antago- 
nist who would jump all round him and keep him moving 
would soon tire him out. 

Though the average Japanese nag is a poor specimen, 
an occasional army officer has a fairly decent pony, well 
kept and neatly saddled. A few European residents in 
the treaty-ports and Tokyo keep saddle-beasts, but they 
are far from good. There are some at livery in the big 
cities ; but not one of those I have seen would you or I 
condescend to throw a leg across at home. A fairish cob 
may now and then be observed in a victoria or a dog-cart ; 
and when he is groomed and harnessed properly he is better 



L 



464 JAPANESE HORSE 

than the mere cheval du pays. But this is due to European 
influences. The horse carries a low head, and though his 
croup is high, he is apt to hug his tail. From the little 
experience I have had with him, I should judge him to 
tire easily. Despite his appearance, however, the country 
horse plods along willingly, and rarely suffers at the hands 
of his master from anything but lack of food — a want 
equally partaken by the man. 



LXXV 

But I fear I may be losing my chiar-oscuro : to say that 
there is no modern Japanese rider except the cavalryman, 
that there is no evidence of there ever having been a 
horseman in the best sense, and to stop there, savors of 
injustice to this wonderful people. There is no more in- 
teresting population in the world. We may indulge in a 
good-natured laugh at the odd way in which the modern 
Jap combines his graceful kimono and his odd national 
clogs with a hideous bean -pot of antiquated pattern, and 
worn any way but the right way ; or we may scream our 
protest at his chopping down venerable cryptomerias 
along the highways in his eagerness to make room for the 
rigid horror of telegraph-poles ; but the fact remains that 
the Japanese are a marvellous race, which has done mar- 
vellous work. 

It is a singular reflection how this nation, starting from 
the same point as our own woad-painted ancestors, has 
wrought out a civilization quite as perfect in its way — 
judging from the Greek standard probably more perfect 
than the European, for it was an aesthetic rather than a 
material one — and yet as different from ours as black 
from white. Of course, at the present day, Japan, with a 
territory and a population as large as Great Britain and 
Ireland, cannot take the place she aspires to in the society 
of nations without conforming to the tenets of our semi- 
mechanical, semi-intellectual civilization. This she is now 
busied with doing, and has made remarkable strides in 

30 



466 TOPSY-TURVYNESS 

acclimating our steam and electricity. But her own civil- 
ization was quite another, as were also her morals, relig- 
ion, habits. 

Like every other purely human structure, the term civil- 
ization is relative. So, for the matter of that, is morals. 
So is religion. So is cleanliness. If the end of civilization 
be to make men happy and contented, then Japan has had 
the greater. If morals be to do nothing of which you 
need be ashamed in the eyes of your own particular world, 
then the Japanese moral code is quite as good as ours. 
If the end of religion be to make men and women good 
members of society, and to prepare them for rest in what- 
ever future state they may be called to, then the Shinto- 
Buddhism of Japan has accomplished it. If to bathe sev- 
eral times a day be cleanliness, then the Japanese is the 
cleanest of mortals. 

But though a highly civilized being, the Japanese has 
always done things in, to us, a topsy-turvy way. As 
Chamberlain points out, the beginning of a book is on our 
last page. A big full -stop heads every newspaper para- 
graph. Men make merry with wine before, not after din- 
ner, and sweets precede meat. Boats are hauled up on 
the beach stern-foremost. People wear white for mourn- 
ing. They carry babies on their backs, not in their arms. 
Keys turn left-handed. A carpenter planes and saws tow- 
ards him, and builds the roof of a house first. It is an 
act of politeness to remove your shoes, not your hat. 
The Japanese dries himself with a damp towel, and dries 
his lacquer in a damp room. He mounts his horse from 
the off side ; all buckles are placed on the off side, and 
when the horse is stabled, he is backed into the stall and 
fed in a tub where our drain is wont to be. His very 
language is what we should style perverse. If you want 
to ask how many guests there are in the hotel, you say : 



MORALS 467 

"Under roof honorable guests how many as to?" the 
last two words suggesting the quant d of the French. For 
all this, to us, utterly wrong-headed method, the Japanese, 
when Perry's black ships first approached their shores, 
were a wonderfully civilized people. 

It has been truly remarked that the Japanese are great 
in small things, and small in great things. Their art is 
true and exquisite, but it is not a broad art like that of 
Athens or the Renaissance. They cannot erect a Parthe- 
non or a St. Peter's, for theirs is a land of earthquakes ; 
still their architecture and the setting of their temples are 
noble, and they can decorate as no one else ever has. 
They have done wonders in small work : their lacquer, 
ivories, porcelains, embroideries, are marvellous ; but they 
have never created a Hermes or a David ; they have 
never conceived a Panathenaic Procession or a Parnassus. 
In landscape-gardening they are masters ; in landscape- 
architecture, if the distinction may be allowed me, we 
have better work. The Mito and the Hama Gardens in 
Tokyo are, each in its way, perfect ; but neither has size 
nor breadth of treatment such as one may see in Central 
Park. 

There can scarcely be said to be a positive code of 
morals. The Decalogue did not prevent Solomon from 
having three hundred wives and seven hundred concu- 
bines — I believe that was the number. You cannot main- 
tain that the Hindoo mother, who, in the frenzy of wor- 
ship, tears from her breast the sucking child and casts it 
to the sacred crocodile in the Ganges — the greatest act of 
self-immolation of which a human being is capable — is 
guilty of infanticide. So with the Japanese. The present 
crown-prince is the son of a concubine, but he is none the 
less crown -prince. How far back do we have to go in 
English history to find an equal origin of many noble 



468 MODESTY 

families who now consider their blood pure ichor ? How 
long ago did the delightful old system of "bundling" 
obtain in our own midst ? What we choose to call female 
modesty is a subservience to a certain code of convention- 
alism. The Japanese woman has one of her own. So 
long as she walks pigeon-toed as an outward symbol of 
correct morals, she may tear all our ordinary rules of 
modesty to shreds. But the Japanese woman is none the 
less truly modest. The country girl will enter a common 
public bath with men, clad solely in her own ideas of de- 
cency, because she has no private bath at home, and to 
bathe is a perfectly natural thing to do ; but she will not 
uncover a square inch of her neck or arms to secure the ad- 
miration of men. If her kimono flops aside in the wind 
she may show her naked leg half way up the thigh -, but 
she will not protrude a toe from beneath her garments 
from mere coquettishness. The geisha-girl is full clad, and 
dances mainly with her arms ; she would scorn to show 
her person or to do high -kicking, as our ballet- girls do; 
and yet she belongs to the class which we frown from our 
midst as play-actors. The Japanese rule is simple. Na- 
kedness is not immodesty at proper times, such as the 
hour of bathing; nakedness, in whole or in part, to in- 
cite desire, is the grossest form of immodesty. The 
Japanese maiden would blush to see our sea-side girl go 
into the breakers with a suit made of half a yard of 
serge ; but she would go in as the Lord made her without 
a notion of impropriety. In other words, the Japanese 
woman treats the entire subject of clothes an naturel. 
Her ideas are very similar to those of the ancient Greeks, 
whom we do not go out of our way to abuse for their 
lack of what we call modesty. 

So with cleanliness. So long as he bathes from one to 
half a dozen times a day (as he literally does), the Jap 



SMELLS 469 

cares little whether he changes his linen or not. We do 
the reverse — bathe less often but change every day or 
two. Which is the better habit ? Now, while the Japan- 
ese homes are all as clean as a lady's boudoir, is their idea 
of sanitation ours, and the smells in Japan often recall 
Coleridge's impromptu rhyme anent Cologne of old : 

"In Koln, a town of monks and bones, 
And pavements fanged with murderous stones, 
And rags and hags and hideous wenches, 
I counted two and seventy stenches — 
All well denned and several stinks ! 
Ye Nymphs, who rule o'er sewers and sinks, 
The River Rhine, it is well known, 
Doth wash the City of Cologne. 
But tell me, Nymphs, what power divine 
Shall henceforth wash the River Rhine ?" 

Truly, their ways (as they were) are not as our ways. 
But they are fast getting " civilized." Even that horror 
of modern entertainments, the swallow-tailed waiter (why 
will he not migrate with the other swallows ?), threatens 
to make Japan an abiding-place. Not so very long ago, 
a Japanese gentleman would invite his friends to a tea- 
house (male friends, of course ; no lady was ever invited to 
dinner) and give them a charming repast, enlivened by 
the songs and dances of the most attractive geishas — who, 
as a class, are the most accomplished women in Japan. 
Nowadays he asks them to a European table, after-din- 
ner speeches and all. Is this a gain? 

By-the-way, this after-dinner speaking reminds me of 
one of the very best things I ever heard said on such 
an occasion — but not in Japan. It was at a Papyrus din- 
ner in Boston, when the guest of the evening was a gen- 
tleman who is now one of our leading young college 
presidents. I cannot quote his felicitous words, but the 

30* 



470 SENTIMENTALISM 

idea was this : " I have always thought," he remarked, 
when he was rather unwillingly got on his legs after the 
Loving Cup had passed around, " as Daniel was sitting in 
the lions' den, looking dubiously at his glaring, heavy- 
maned hosts, and wondering when the performance was 
going to begin, that one of his chief causes for self-gratu- 
lation must have been the agreeable fact that in all hu- 
man probability he would not be called upon for an 
after-dinner speech." 

The Jap is a sentimentalist of the first water — in a wa}^ 
we Anglo-Saxons do not understand. He fairly worships 
his cherry blossoms ; the first two weeks in April are a 
constant fete for the entire population; and prince and 
peasant, side by side, will write scraps of poetry on scraps 
of paper and tie them, each to a twig of his favorite tree. 
Adjoining my country-place at home is the Weld Farm, 
renowned for its champagne cider. There is no more 
superb sight in Japan than the two hundred acres of 
apple - trees on Weld Farm in full bloom ; but what 
Yankee ever tied a piece of poetry to an apple-tree? His 
character, his education, his tendencies, all lead him to 
prefer the cider. The Japs are quite crazy over flowers. 
If a man were proven before a Japanese jury to have 
committed murder in the first degree, and was also 
shown to be peculiarly devoted to cherry blossoms or 
chrysanthemums, I doubt if any twelve men could find it 
in their hearts to bring in a verdict of guilty. But halt ! 
so far as our subject goes, 

"The flowers that bloom in the spring, Tra-la. 
Have nothing to do with the case." 




LXXVI 

Well, after this unwarranted interpolation, what more 
about Japanese horses ? JSTot much ; but there are some 
queer tricks which they have with animals in that coun- 
try which are interesting as contrasting theirs with our 
methods of management. The bulls they use for draught 
wear the usual nose-ring, and have their tails tied around 
to one side, under the impression, no doubt, that if he 
cannot lash himself into fury with his tail, a bull cannot 
misbehave. It is something of an Irish bull, this starting 
in on horses and ending where I have ; but as we have 
got so far, it may not be amiss to point out the fact that 
our idea that bulls and stallions are necessarily hard to 
manage is a mistaken one. When kept for breeding, they 
may indeed become so ; but all over the Orient they are 
in common use; and when they are not put to service 
they are as tractable as our steers and geldings. But you 
must keep them at work, and with their own sex. 

Another queer Japanese trick with sumpter-horses is to 
tie their heads back to the girth by so tight a martingale 
that they can neither get their heads up nor down, nor 
stretch out their noses. The head is held in a complete 
vice. The animal, thus hampered, cannot possibly labor 
to good effect. The horse's tail is sometimes tied around 
to his girth in the same way as the bull's. 

A certain dread of the horse is very noticeable in the 
Japanese way of using him. I have seen a well-behaved 
young driving - horse, which would work kindly and re- 



472 STRAW SHOES 

liably in a snaffle-bridle, bitted with so severe a curb that 
he was worried out of any sense he had ; and to offset 
the awkward way in which he would act, the driver 
would have a footman run beside him all the way, help 
him turn corners, and hold back the carriage down the 
least incline. You and I would have driven him any- 
where single-handed ; but his Japanese owners made the 
poor colt twitchy and nervous by their own nervousness. 
The same quality appears in their putting nose -rings on 
cows. And yet the Jap is a courageous fellow ; it is only 
enterprise he lacks. 

The straw shoes, with which the horse and bull and man 
are alike shod, are peculiar to the Japanese. They last 
barely a day or tw T o, but they cost nothing, and any one 
can make them. They give a curiously clumsy look to 
the feet of the animals, but they prevent the horse from 
interfering. If a horse is shod our way, and happens to 
lose a shoe, on goes a straw substitute, and the odd shoe 
gives him a peculiarly one-sided look. 

It is not over- polite, perhaps, to say of the Japanese 
that he lacks good looks as much as his horse ; but the 
fact remains that he is not a handsome mortal. For all 
that, the old adage, " Handsome is as handsome does," 
distinctly applies to him, for no man is more patient, more 
amiable, more helpful, more loyal than the Japanese. The 
men are strongly Mongolian in face, and have almost uni- 
formly ugly mouths. I have generally observed that ar- 
tistic races acquire sensitive mouths ; but to the Japanese 
this rule does not apply. The women are far less pro- 
nounced in type, and average better looking ; really pretty 
women are no rarity; but in figure they are too short- 
legged to come within the Attic standard. Moreover, 
the constant use of clogs gives them an extremely un- 
graceful gait ; and when they walk in their stocking-feet, 




N&^? 



MONGOLIAN HORSEMAN 



GOOD MANNERS 475 

as they all do at home, they are still awkward. Like all 
undersized mammals, they have heads which are too big ; 
they are, so to speak, of a regular pony build. 

Still, they are very charming, the Japanese women, 
and graceful in their way. The dancing of the geisha- 
girls is full of meaning and singularly attractive ; and 
while, like Chaucer s nun, who " intuned in hir nose ful 
swetely," their singing is monotonous, it, too, has its good 
side. A geisha never shrieks, as all too many of our 
singers do; and, after all, may not the style of singing 
be a mere matter of taste 1 A superb soprano aria sent 
the members of an early Japanese embassy to Europe 
into peals of laughter, and yet we are forced to acknowl- 
edge their keen artistic instinct. In grace and dignity 
and exquisite pantomime, the dancers are far and away 
beyond our own, whose posturing and kicking are nowa- 
days mostly directed at the occupants of the orchestra 
stalls, much as a well-known preacher was once said to 
have delivered the most eloquent prayer ever addressed to 
a Boston audience. The Japanese woman's dress is pretty, 
if not graceful. The skirts, cut scant so as discreetly to 
clothe the person in Avhatever position she may assume — 
and she squats half the time — lack the pleasant lines of 
the best European fashions. 

But if manners make the man (and woman) in beauty 
as well as charm, then the Japanese stand distinctly at 
the head of the list. So delightful a people can nowhere 
else be found ; and if they lack grace of person, they pos- 
sess grace of manner in superabundant measure, and the 
truest form of politeness. That this has always been so 
is testified to by no less a witness than St. Francis Xavier, 
who was in Japan in the sixteenth century. " This na- 
tion is the delight of my soul," he writes. On the other 
hand, the aesthetic Japanese has neither the accuracy, re- 



476 GLOBE-TROTTING 

liability, nor general vovq of his disagreeable cousin in 
China. This seems to be the universal testimony, 

I much fear that the foregoing pages would have be- 
trayed the globe-trotter, had I not, in my Preface, already 
confessed to being one. Unlike the Frenchman, who as- 
serted that he had lived in each of the capitals of the 
world all his life, I have not spent my days studying 
au fond every country I have been fortunate enough to 
get a glimpse of. After all, globe-trotting is no more 
than the reading of many books instead of the study of 
one science. And is not to be full of many books or 
countries an enviable satiety — if, indeed, one ever becomes 
satiated ? Globe-trotting is not only an interesting occu- 
pation per se, but if your powers of observation and as- 
similation are good, your mental book -shelves become 
gradually filled with 

"A twenty bokes cloathe in blake or rede" 

which never cease to give you pleasure so long as heart 
(or head) failure can be staved off. 

As I am supposed to be writing on the horse and horse- 
manship of Japan, I will say, in conclusion, that the gaits 
of the Japanese horse — i.e., the only one you ever see 
much of, the army horse — have of late been reduced down 
to the severity of the British trot. Left to himself, he 
will naturally amble or rack. The soldiers ride much of 
the time with two hands, in the ranks and out. One sees 
a squadron of lancers passing by, and half the men will be 
using both their hands to guide their horses. How shall 
they manage sword and lance ? Is not this two-handed 
military riding a contradiction in terms? And yet the 
habit seems to be growing. Why it is that the nation 
with the least military experience of any of the Great 
Powers should be able to force her habits on all the others, 



ENGLISH CAVALRY 477 

I cannot see. That the English are in fact the best sports- 
men in the saddle seems to be held to be a proof that 
they are the best horsemen, which they decidedly are not. 
Nor, indeed, has English cavalry had the chance to exhibit 
any excellence it may possess since the days of Balaclava. 



LXXVII 

Midway across the stormy Pacific (a contradictory but 
accurate description, by-the-way,) one encounters, in the 
Sandwich Islands, two types of riders quite interesting 
enough to claim a moment's notice. The first, or bullock- 
riders, are solely from the people. There is no native 
horse in Hawaii. The Polynesian first -comers brought 
cattle with them, but no horses. Those you now find have 
since been fetched from Australia and California, and bear 
the European stamp. The bullock is used to a certain ex- 
tent for saddle-work, for the country paths are, as a rule, 
too narrow or too ill -kept for vehicles of any kind. He 
is saddled much as a horse would be, and with a common 
horn-pommel tree ; he is bridled solely with a nose-ring, 
the rope from which is passed upward and between his 
horns to the rider's hands. He is not a fine-bred fellow, 
this bullock, neither rapid nor easy of gait ; but he serves 
his turn. The bullock of India might be made a really 
passable saddle - beast ; not so this one. Still he is em- 
ployed by the natives both for pack and riding. He walks 
well, and jogs in a rather clumsy fashion ; and as all bul- 
locks are more intelligent than you suppose, he is readily 
guided by moving bridle rope to right or left. 

The other rider may perhaps furnish us with the miss- 
ing link between the side-saddle of to-day and the seat to 
which our fin de siecle Amazons aspire. She sits simply 
and atrociously astraddle. Such a guy as she usually is 
in her riding-dress it is hard to imagine — be she afoot or 



:/ v-^ 



v <*• *? 






^;.-~* 







BULLOCK-RIDERS 481 

a-horseback. This is partly due to the fact that in these 
volcanic isles woman has not been wont to be much more 
clad than her native hills; and she has not yet learned 
how to dress. Her toilet, to be sure, when she has been 
semi-Americanized, is not quite so simple as that of the in- 
digenous Hula girl, who is robed in her own hair, a short 
ballet-skirt of straw, and perhaps a wreath of flowers ; but 
it takes her a short time only to get ready for a ride. 
Any kind of a hat, any kind of a jacket, guiltless of cor- 
sets — in fact, what she commonly wears — remains ; and 
then, bound about the waist over the latter, she adds a 
divided skirt, or rather a pair of huge overalls, twice as 
long as the rider's legs and four times as big around. Bar 
starch, they are the same as those in which the Japanese 
actor struts his short hour upon the stage — struts, because 
in such garments he can do naught else. When our eques- 
trienne moves about in this leg -gear, she looks like a 
pudgy, but extremely long-legged man walking on his 
knees. When she has mounted, which she does with no 
great effort, or grace either, she is merely a man in the 
usual saddle, with the most uncouth of "togs," which hang 
down on either side to within a few inches of the ground. 
The rider sticks her toes in the stirrups, stuff and all, and 
otherwise, except for some flowers with which she adorns 
herself and her horse, is more original to look at than 
soul-filling. The whole rig is ungainly enough and not to 
be rashly imitated — though, indeed, it may be improved 
by being what we should call " tailor-made." 

But from this questionable beauty there is an evolution 
into a decidedly neat riding- suit, in which I saw several 
young American ladies cantering about Honolulu, and 
very prettily they looked. A neat, horseman-like hat, and 
a jacket neither too close nor so loose as to appear baggy, 
was finished off by a divided skirt of cloth heavy enough 

31 



482 WOMEN ASTRADDLE 

to fall and stay in place by its own weight, and cut so 
snugly in the seat as not to drag upward when in the 
saddle. This skirt — though I had no chance to make a 
sartorial investigation — must have been a mere pair of 
excessively loose trousers, gradually widening to the feet, 
which latter, when mounted, could just be seen. The 
lassies used the common man's rig, and rode upright and 
well. 

Still, nothing that I have ever seen since has impressed 
me so strongly as a beautiful portrait of herself which a 
lovely old lady once showed me, some forty years ago, in 
Silesia. She was painted riding astride, as all women in 
her youth had done in that part of the world, with long 
flowing Turkish-style trousers, and mounted on a spirited 
Arabian. It may have been the impressionableness of 
youth — the inflammability, I might say — which has made 
the portrait keep its place so freshly in my mind, but I 
remember it well, and as the sole pattern worthy of copy- 
ing which I have ever seen. This was a picture, however. 
I have never seen a woman astride a horse whom I 
thought a good model for universal imitation. 




HAWAIIAN AMAZON RIDER 



LXXYIII 

But after passing in review the Eiders of Many Lands, 
when I again set foot on shore in the United States I 
could not but feel that this country of ours is the home 
par excellence of horsemen. The idea is not, I think, bred 
solely of national pride ; my readers will surely absolve me 
from narrowness or provincialism in the matter of equita- 
tion, or from any set scheme to rob other nations of their 
due. I am happy to admit, for it is manifestly true, that 
the best sportsman in the saddle is the Briton. As a cross- 
country rider, as a polo-player, as a breeder and rider of 
race-horses at home, in tent-pegging or pig-sticking abroad, 
he is, on the whole, unequalled. On the other hand, the 
German is as far and away ahead of him in military rid- 
ing — that is, in the drilling of bodies of horse — as the 
Frenchman is ahead of him in the niceties of breaking, 
training, and manege-riding. Where to place the Arab 
it is hard to say. With all due respect to the man or the 
race that produced the original strain of blood on which 
we all rely for our speed and endurance, I do not think 
that the best Arab is as good a rider as the best European 
or American ; while the average Arab is, in efficiency, far 
below our riders under parallel conditions. The Cossack 
makes, no doubt, the best half-barbaric light cavalry in 
the world, and in his element is hard to equal ; and the 
Australian — from all reports, though I regret to say that 
I cannot speak from personal observation — is a close 
second to our plains-rider. But, after all said, it must be 



486 CONCLUSION 

/ 

allowed that in some matters equine we Americans are 
pre-eminent. The word "allowed" is, perchance, too 
strong. I know that some Britons — bless their cramped 
Saxon obstinate blindness ! — will not allow that we Ameri- 
cans have ever done anything — be it in electricity, ma- 
chinery, or trotting - horses. Not even our republican 
institutions or our public schools have any merit or 
originality ; that we can build or sail yachts is to them a 
mere fiction. But apart from this distinct type of all- 
owning, all-controlling, all-inventing, all-comprehending 
Briton, I have generally found that the Briton who truly 
" knows and knows that he knows " is glad to admit 
virtue and ability wherever he may find it. And, eliminat- 
ing the Briton who "knows not and knows not that he 
knows not," I will venture to claim that in distance-riding, 
which is perhaps the very highest form of horsemanship, 
we Americans are quite unapproached — our army-marches 
and express -rides have clearly demonstrated this fact; 
that in rough -riding no man alive comes near the cow- 
boy, and that in road -riding and breeding of saddle- 
beasts the Southerner " beats all creation." It might be 
more scholarly to make the superlatives a trifle less ob- 
trusive ; but, on the whole, they may stand. Added to 
all this the fact that we have enriched the world by a 
brand-new type in the trotter, and that in racing and in 
polo and hunting we are fast catching up with our English 
cousins ; and while I do not wish to " claim everything," 
I think — to recur to my original word — that it must be 
allowed that in all-round ability to breed, train, and ride 
the horse to the very best advantage, the American is 
primus inter pares. 

THE END 



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